Coop Costs A Real Shocker!

[DKM]

I don't feel quite so bad now about the price of our chicken coop. I had told my husband not to tell anyone how much we paid for it. After seeing on BYC how cheaply some people built their coops, I thought we would be able to do it too. Was I wrong!!! My husband decided if we wanted something that would look decent in the barn lot, we needed carpenters. So we hired two out of work house framers to build it. They did a great job and it looks good but we would have to sell a lot of eggs to break even in this venture.

We are enjoying the chickens anyway and looking forward to eggs.

 

[schellie69]

Now I don't feel so bad since I bought the recycled flooring for my coop floor the kind that does not rot, or get termites. I did use old pallets for the outside walls and my DH is doing all the labor, so that will help keep the cost down but I will be able to use it for many years to come.

 

[Hugerat]

Hobbies are rarely "cost effective." I make beer and wine, the raw material are fairly reasonable its all the gadgets and doodads that drive up the price.

Certainly you could just throw some chickens in a box and give them feed and water in a couple of garage sale buckets and they would probably be happy and they would still be fun to watch.

But it is much more fun to spend a pile of money to build them castles and feed them on a silver platter.

 

[snappy]

There are less expensive ways to build coops. You can check out my website for ideas.

 

[Tam'ra of Rainbow Vortex]

I am more and more leaning toward making my new coop out of cob!
My current is a 6x7 revamped garden shed with attatched dog-kennel run (given to and remodeled by my Dad- no cost!) but it is too small for all the delightful chickens I want to have

So I started designing a 10x12. It incorporates all the things I have learned keeping chickens in the last 2 coops (the prior one went with the rental property- it could have been an outhouse in another life- 3.5x4.5) So the new one will be bigger and better!!! I have all the tools, the plans, a pile of scrap lumber, and 2 room mates will ing to help. But then one of them suggested making it out of cob.
For those who don't know, cob is basically like adobe, except you sculpt the building, rather than making bricks and then stacking them. It is a mixture of dirt (cheap) straw (cheapish) and water (cheap)! In Wales thay have houses made from it still standing after 200+ years... some still occupied! It is naturally insulated and you can mold windows into it as you build and they can be anything- broken glass, bottles and jars, hardware cloth, etc. You just seal the egdes up and you are done. No framing, no hassle.
Of course you DO still have to frame the door if you want a nice one, and you still need wood for perches... but not nearly as much as a normal coop.
Another plus is how easily it can be integrated into the landscape.
We want to build a real human house of it someday, but we decided we will practice on our chickens since they aren't so picky.

 

[beth59]

I've been intrigued with cob construction for a while. We used to have a company here who did workshops, but I found out about them too late and now they're in TN.

I learned a long time ago not to count up the costs of my hobbies. It makes it less enjoyable and if you're like most of us, you will have a lot of fun watching and raising your chickens and it will be worth it in the long run. We're got our first chicks last May and have enjoyed them so much that we're planning on building another coop and getting some other breeds. The $ we get for selling eggs pays for their feed, but that's about it. The enjoyment we get out of working with and watching them is priceless.

Beth

 

[PNightbird]

If there is one thing I have learned about reading all these posts, is that people really get a kick out of spending a lot of money and building their chickens incredible looking coops fit for a Queen..lol. And the coop usually has more to do with the builder and what They want, rather than what the chicken needs. Personally, we just can't afford to make our chickens a castle, and quite frankly I don't think they would care either way..lol. Someone asked how you can predator proof an open air coop like we are building, but honestly you just use the same things you would use to predator proof any other coop - 1/2 inch hardware cloth over all the big windows, as chicken wire isn't strong enough to withstand many hungry critters. I hope I didn't give the impression that the windows would be unprotected, that would be crazy! Another way to lower costs substantially is Not to overbuild the structure. What this means is that it's not necessary to put in so many joints and support structures, or in other words, don't build a chicken coop as strongly as you build a human house. The support frame can be simple, yet it will still provide years of service. And the chickens won't mind a bit. As a matter of fact, in the old days there used to be a saying that went along the lines of "The best eggs come from the worst coops." Meaning that the coops weren't closed in but rather had many open areas from decayed wood. However, when all is said and done, you need to build what will make You happy, as the chickens will be happy no matter what usually. So if you need a chicken castle..then go ahead and do it.

As for chickens putting up with cold, here is an excerpt from the excellent chicken coop book that is available here:

http://www.nortoncreekpress.com/fresh-air-poultry-houses2.html

"My first open-front or fresh-air houses were used during that severe cold winter of 1904 and 1905, and remarkably good results were obtained. Perhaps it will be of interest to you to know what led me to develop my fresh-air poultry house.

During the spring of 1903, Dr. Prince T. Woods, the well known writer and authority on poultry and poultry diseases, visited a number of poultry plants in our section of the country, where at that time very unsatisfactory results were being obtained. Post-mortem examinations made on a great many birds of various ages led him to believe that an abundance of fresh air in the poultry houses was practically all that was needed to check the disease and put the stock in better condition. Acting upon his advice, I took the windows out of my poultry houses at once and kept them out until late fall. Seeing a marked change in the health and vigor of my birds, and knowing of the remarkable results being obtained in many sections of the country in the sanitariums that are provided with outdoor sleeping rooms for patients, I felt that in order to get the best results with my breeders I needed to keep the windows wide open all winter. This was the winter of 1903 and 1904.

Altho the three houses that I kept my breeders in were not well adapted to such exposure to the elements in severe winter weather, I obtained fine results, receiving an egg yield during the coldest months, from 150 Light Brahmas, of from 50 to 60 per cent. I was able to hatch from 55 to 65 per cent of the total number of eggs placed in the incubators, and the chickens were large, strong and vigorous. The following spring I had a very small death rate among my chickens.

The three houses with which I made this test were 20x10, (20 ft. long, 10 ft. deep), pitch roof, 5 ft. post, two windows in the south side. During a heavy snow storm, if the wind blew, the floor of the house would be entirely covered with snow, and a large drift in front unless one of the windows was closed. I decided the following fall to try to overcome this defect as much as possible, and I believe with my improved fresh-air house I have controlled the effects of the weather changes as much as it is possible to with a house that is open all the time.

I will tell you of an experience with a snow storm I had with these old style houses run with windows open. It was during the first severe snow storm of the year, about the last of December. At night when I left my houses the weather was calm, but cloudy. I did not expect a storm, so left the four windows wide open as usual. About midnight I awoke and found it was blowing almost a gale and snowing hard. In the morning the snow was a foot deep and had drifted badly. It had also grown quite cold. When I arrived at my houses to water and feed the fowls, I found the entire floor of the houses was covered with snow and opposite the windows it lay in drifts two and three feet deep. There was also quite a little snow on the dropping boards. I wondered what effect this would have upon the egg yield, but found after the eggs were gathered that I had more than any previous day, and from this time on they increased right along. I did not have a single bird catch cold or experience any other setback from this extreme exposure.

To illustrate the benefit of fresh air in such diseases as roup, colds, etc., I will quote what Prof. W. P. Brooks Hatch Experiment Station, Mass., wrote me :—'We are becoming more and more convinced that plenty of fresh air both night and day is favorable to health and satisfactory egg production. Last winter I kept a small number of fowls in an open coop on the ground all winter long. They were protected simply by putting burlap over the wire mesh around the sides of that portion of the coop at one end covered by a light roof of building paper. Under this roof were the perches. This was certainly extreme treatment. The fowls were put there because they showed signs of roup and two of them lost an eye each, but they recovered in a short time and the hens began to lay in mid-winter, almost literally while living in a snow bank!'

Prof. Charles K. Graham, of Connecticut Agricultural College, Storrs, made a test in a common tent of the A type. Leaving the front open in this tent, he installed a flock of White Leghorn fowls headed by a proud, handsome cock bird, and found that not a comb was frosted, while some of the combs in the regulation closed houses were touched with frost."​

 

[dparadise]

We decided to go that route, 1 side of the coop will be open for better air circulation. I bought hardware cloth to close up that side and that's where the door into the coop will be. I live in southwest Florida and except for last winter, we usually only have 3 or 4 days of really cold weather. If it seems to be another cold winter this year we can always close that side with a tarp or some cloth. I'm more worried about the heat here and figure that 1 open side will help cool the coop.
We're leaving the east side open instead of the south because the sun is so hot down here.

 

[PNightbird]

Great idea dparadise. Were is MS so our weather is similar, and like you said, heat is the major factor. As a matter of fact, I just read that chickens don't mind the cold, but they sure do mind the heat. The last thing we need to do is put them in a closed up oven for a coop. The more windows the better.

 

[geeber]

My partner & I purchased plans to build our own coop. We were going to hire our neighbor to build it for us. He told us that supplies alone would be $700+. So my partner went on line to craigslist & found a fellow who builds & sells his coops. $630 later we are in chicken heaven & business. Our chickens are some of the best entertainment ever. We love our girls & treat them like the queens they are.