Coop for 26

[bigmike&nan]

Quote:
Fresh Eggs,

You're making me a little homesick, I used to live in Pacifica until about 16 months ago, now in New Jersey on The Shore, heck I thought California had the only pretty beaches... LOL

WHAT WAYNE SAYS IS VERY ON THE MONEY...


Friendly advice - make a BIG coop - two things about chickens I learned here:

You can NEVER HAVE ENOUGH ROOM FOR YOUR CHICKENS
YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH CHICKENS


It is much easier to build big than to add on - make sure you have a BIG coop and covered run, even if you PLAN on free ranging. Those areas around San Francisco (hilly ones like San Jose, Castro Valley, Concord, Walnut Creek and so on) all have hawks, eagles and such prowling. Everyone envisions free ranging as the best way to raise chickens, but ya gotta be careful there. You may not see hawks and such very often now, but you add chickens to your property and you WILL. We never saw much but a few buzzards (supposedly passive birds) but once we got some hens and a rooster man we started seeing hawks.

Line your coop floors with linoleum, a remnant from Home Depot will do the trick for cheap...

Start making a list of names, if you get that many hens soon you will have chicks... Oh Boy !!!!

Good luck !!


The inside upstairs of our coop before it was finished. NOTE: the remnant linoleum glued and tacked into place with small pieces of treated wood to make cleanup EASY PEASY...

 

[felidaet]

I looked around for a long time for "plans" as well. I found lots of photos of coops but not actual plans. I finally found one that is located at: http://www.buildeazy.com/chicken_coop_1.html.

I have not started building it yet. I will probably build it in mid Feb., which is when our weather usually starts to improve. I am getting chicks around Mar 1st and so I figure that I won't need the coop until early April.

I am making a few modifications to the plan. Rather than 6' x 6' I am going to lengthen it to 6' x 10'. 6' x 7' will be used for the coop. the other 3' will be fior storage. There will be a wall seperating the two areas and each will have a seperate door. If it turns out that I need the entire 10' for the chickens it will be easy to knock out the dividing wall.

Other changes include using 4"x 6" runners under neith instead of 4" x 4". The exterior will be 7/16" plywood instead of 3/4". The roofing technique on the plan is unusual. I am going to use regular house composition shingles. I am also going to have the roof overhang 12" all the way around. The roof ridge board will be 2" x 6" instead of 2" x 4". There are a few other minor modifications.

I am still gathering ideas and thoughts from this forum. I am reading it almost every evening.

To make the construction easier I requested a power miter saw for Christmas. Luckily my wife got it for me! I have always wanted one of these and building a coop was the perfect excuse

.

 

[beak]

Quote:
If you leave the eaves open and put a ceiling in you can put grille vents in the ceiling on each end. The wind blows over the top of the ceiling and pulls the smell out. If you do that be sure the grilles are screwed in and ceiling is secure against predators.