With six Red Star chicks arriving in a couple of weeks, it was time to start coop planning. At first we were going to purchase a coop, but then my father offered to help us build a "reclaimed material coop", which will save us a bunch of money and should make for some fun adventures in the kindling pile.
We started with this crate as the base of the coop. It was originally used for shipping window glass:
The crate and much of the lumber came from my father's friend, who owns a custom window company. He gives my father lots of scrap lumber for projects and kindling for the wood stove.
I was also able to score this window sample for free from the same source (man, do I owe THAT guy a couple dozen eggs):
Before we could start building, a bunch of the reclaimed lumber needed to be de-nailed and de-stapled:
The process had the added benefit of de-skinning a bit of my hands and fingers!
We ended up with a pretty good bucket of metal by the end of that process:
First in, the flooring:
Next up, framing in the roof:
The front of the coop is coming together. The big hole is for the window, the little hole is the chicken door:
Next up, siding the non-nesting box side:
Some roof work:
The nesting boxes will mount on this side:
Here is the "people door", which will give us easy access for cleaning, opening the window, and general chicken visiting:
A lot of progress for a little over a day....weather got cold here in RI today, with more snow possible this week, so may take a couple weeks for things to warm and dry out enough to finish, but I'm pretty excited.
The coop is rock solid...and sadly, rock heavy. I am NOT looking forward to moving this thing!
Will post more pictures as we make more progress, get it in place, and build the run.
Thanks for looking!
We started with this crate as the base of the coop. It was originally used for shipping window glass:
The crate and much of the lumber came from my father's friend, who owns a custom window company. He gives my father lots of scrap lumber for projects and kindling for the wood stove.
I was also able to score this window sample for free from the same source (man, do I owe THAT guy a couple dozen eggs):
Before we could start building, a bunch of the reclaimed lumber needed to be de-nailed and de-stapled:
The process had the added benefit of de-skinning a bit of my hands and fingers!
We ended up with a pretty good bucket of metal by the end of that process:
First in, the flooring:
Next up, framing in the roof:
The front of the coop is coming together. The big hole is for the window, the little hole is the chicken door:
Next up, siding the non-nesting box side:
Some roof work:
The nesting boxes will mount on this side:
Here is the "people door", which will give us easy access for cleaning, opening the window, and general chicken visiting:
A lot of progress for a little over a day....weather got cold here in RI today, with more snow possible this week, so may take a couple weeks for things to warm and dry out enough to finish, but I'm pretty excited.
The coop is rock solid...and sadly, rock heavy. I am NOT looking forward to moving this thing!
Will post more pictures as we make more progress, get it in place, and build the run.
Thanks for looking!
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