Coop Costs A Real Shocker!

[Stevo]

My coop was an existing racing pigeon loft that was here when we bought the property. So far except for some chicken wire I havent had to buy anything. I made the run to get them used to going outside and going in when I called them at night. As soon as they can fly over the 3ft wire they are freerange. And it does not take long lol. At 5 weeks they are over it.

 

[HeatherLynn]

We have lucked out and use an old calf barn. It has wooden walls on the bottom and wire mesh on top. Attatched to this is super heavy rubber sheeting they use to cover flat roofs. Used of course and free. When it rains or it gets chilly at night the rubber flips up and hooks on to the top of the walls to provide a very secure covering. Total I think we spent $50 on materials so far. That being said it is not finished. We also spent roughly another 50 building a 2 apartment mini coop to hold our teenager chicks. Everything is a work in progress and as free or cheap materials come to us we will more than likely expand and improve. For now we could comfortably house probably 50 or 60 chickens.

Can't always have a barn available to convert though but there are others ways to keep costs down. We just saw a local add for a FREE large metal carport. I could easily think of ways to convert this into a very nice coop. Another idea would be to build it out of pallets. In the handyman magazine I found an article about building sheds and fire wood storage out of pallets. This can be completely free building material.

All this being said I do envy some of these pretty coops.

 

[77horses]

Wow!

It's amazing sometimes how much building a simple coop can be, but I agree that if it's built right it will last longer and be better quality.

So far I've paid almost $200 on my coop, and I haven't even painted it yet. That's about the last thing I need to do. I used all or mostly all new supplies that I bought myself, some supplies were lying around here that I used...My goal was to spend no more than $100, but I guess that didn't work because I spent about $86 on the first day to Home Depot to get supplies (nails, wood sheets for the wall, 2x3's, etc.).

 

[drunkdog]

add in the cost of having soil brought in if/when neccessary...we had to fill in 3 yards of material...sand is running 43/yard atm here and thats before any coop construction begins

 

[gltrap54]

OP here.......... This is so much cheaper than my shrink!!! Misery loves company

I'll be sure to post pics!

 

[chickerdoodle]

Ouch--I know the materials cost over $1,000--not sure how much over

but I'm afraid to calculate it. My hubby is building it (nearly finished-YEAH!) from the plans I drew up. He decided to use shingles on the roof to match our home as well as the same paint colors. All new 4x4's and 2x4's supports, gables, 3/4"plywood, 1/2" hardware cloth with a sand run. Vinyl flooring too. He's spent several weekends doing it and I am glad we are down to just painting it and buying raccoon proof locks.

I did put in ventilation in the plans and also windows that can be opened for more summer breeze to go through. One door is going to be open with all hardware cloth for most of the year but he built a second door that's solid for the winter. All for 5 spoiled pullets who are still in our family room (4 weeks old). Even the run is roofed as it rains a lot here during the winter. Hope they are happy and lay lots of eggs--I'm gonna charge $150.00 per dozen. If you want some be sure to PM me

 

[PNightbird]

My hubby today told me that just the roof alone on our coop, made of those clear roofing panels, would cost over $300.00!

That's just for about 6 panels he said, as our coop is only 8 x 8. Well, that's way more than I want to spend so we are going back to the original plans of putting on a shingled roof..lol.

We have plenty of shingles left over that were given to us by the roofers who put our new roof on after hurricane Katrina destroyed it, so now the coop will be the same color as our home, roof and all.

I am still concerned about lighting inside the coop, as I read chickens need about 14 hours of light to lay well. Has anyone tried or used any type of solar lighting so that you don't have to wire the coop or string an extension cord to it? We have dogs who Love to chew, so I really don't want any chords out in the yard they can sink their teeth into. Any ideas on this?

 

[savingdogs]

We really did not have cash to spend so my ingenious husband created our coop out of his extensive pile of stuff he has saved for one reason or another, and lo and behold, he actually made a coop for us out of it, and now an extension for our ducks. Certainly there are more beautiful poultry farms to behold, but ours has not cost us much at all. We did use some materials that cost money but we already had on hand, so we did not count those things (i.e., we had a couple gallons of outdoor paint). Our expenses the first year of housing our chickens and now our ducks probably amount to less than 200.00. Even so, we count those as expensive eggs, considering our labor. Good thing we enjoyed ourselves.

We did choose to light our coop, PNightbird, and have dogs. We got around the cord problem by mounting a pole to the side of the coop. Our extension cord going out does not run along the ground at all, but goes from the house out to the pole and down to the coop, away from critters. Sometimes wild birds perch there is all.
You could always decide not to light your coop, I'm sad to think we are "wearing out" these particular birds as far as their laying capabilities. We get plenty of eggs!

 

[rsimpson]

This was the first step in building our coop.

Dug thru a big scrap pile and got all the 2x4 lumber a guy could want.

 

[chickerdoodle]

Quote:
I am afraid of having a cord coming out of the coop as well. Don't think the dogs will eat it--just worry the ancient, nearly blind terrier

tripping over it! For some reason she loves to romp around (she still romps!

) the area my hubby built the coop. Its about a 35x 20 area with pea gravel and on the higher point of a slight slope. The slope will be in our favor and prevent the coop becoming a swamp for the chickens in the rainy winter.