I am new to chickens and to BYC forum. My DH and I built a coop from the log siding we took off of the front of the house during a remodel. It's foot print is approx. 4 ft. by 8 ft, which we choose because that is the size of a sheet of plywood. I had the design in my head after buying a book on chicken coops and looking on the web, but I had a hard time communicating it to DH who is a bricklayer, not a carpenter. All in all, I think it came out rather nicely. I would have liked it to be bigger, but there's always next year! We have 5 little ladies that we bought as pullets from a girl who raises chickens for show and for pleasure. I'm pretty sure they are not pure bred, but we love them just the same. We used 4x4 pressure treated posts, but painted them to hopefully keep the chemicals away from the girls. The framing is all 2x4's. The roof is plastic because the metal roofing was too expensive. We used old storm windows off of our house and put a small one on one end and a larger one in the front. Both have hardware cloth on the inside to allow for ventilation during hot weather. They can be closed for cooler weather, but we may have to cover them completely if it gets too cold. The chicken door is a sliding door made from part of an old bi-fold door. DH attached a hook and rope system for opening it from the outside. The end opposite the small window has double doors also made from bi-fold doors. Currently we have old galvanized nest boxes mounted inside the coop, which can be easily accessed by a hinged door on the back, but I hope to add boxes to the outside to give the girls more room on the inside. The pen is made from wooden pallets that DH brought home from a job site. It is attached to the coop and the whole thing is enclosed with chicken wire which is curved outward and buried in the ground to hopefully prevent predators. There is also a sliding door on the end of the pen so that I can let the girls out to free-range when I am home and outside with them. Changes I want to make are to make the outside pen taller so that I can get inside to clean it without having to crawl around on my knees; add another pen so that I can keep any future moms and babies seperate from the eating egg layers ( I have a fear of cracking open an egg and finding an embryo)! and building an altogether larger coop and run in the future.
I'll post a picture once I figure out how.
I'll post a picture once I figure out how.
