First Coop

[WillChicken]

Greetings,

I have been a lurker for awhile and we just built our first coop. We have very little real building experience, this is by far the biggest project we have ever built ourselves.

Plan is for an 8' x 16' coop

Breaking ground. Treated 4x6's on cinder blocks. We picked this spot because of the good tree cover. We have lots of birds of prey in the area.



Next we had to level all the 4x6's. This took the most time of all the project



Next we built the floor frame out of 2x6's and squared it up. This rest on the treated 4x6"s and does not touch the ground.


Next we installed a subfloor and started framing our door. I used instructables.com to learn basic framing. We used AdvancedTec sub flooring and green lumber for the framing. All the lumber we used from this point was green and from a local sawmill.



My helper

 

[WillChicken]

Getting the walls up, having green lumber(i think thats is what it is called) makes things much easier imo. Nails/screws go in much easier. We didn't square up the walls until we got the the roof later in the build.

We also got our first chicken!! It only lasted a day or so before it took a fall down the steps and broke.



On Sunday night we got a unexpected call from the post office. Our chickens had arrived, we were not expecting them for another month!! It was also the coldest night of the year in our area. Lucky for us the post office worker was headed our way and agreed to drop them off at 10:30pm. All 105 of them arrived alive that night. Only 50 were ours.


We had to quickly setup something and get these guys warm!!


Very over crowed pool.

 

[WillChicken]

At this point we had to move so I didn't take many pictures.

Finishing up framing


Adding some siding. Lumber mills have this cheap and we liked the look better than the other option .


Small door for the chick to go out into the yard.


The entrance is covered by the roof, this is were we plan to store our feed barrels. The roof is mainly tin with a few polycarbonate sheets to let light into the coop.

 

[Jaxon4141]

Nice coop. Exceptional siding. What wood is it?

 

[wilbilt]

I can get similar boards here pretty cheap, but it is cedar. The siding on our coop will likely be OSB, as it fits the budget.

 

[stcroixusvi]

Lovely siding! And great helper!

 

[wilbilt]

You might want to consider adding some diagonal bracing, as the lap siding does not have the shear strength of solid sheathing. Some 1x4's nailed to the studs on the inside would do the trick.

 

[Baymule]

Your coop is so cute!! Congrats on a job well done!! and welcome to chicken keeping. I lurked here for several months before I built my coop. I learned so much from the forums. keep us updated on your chicks progress!

 

[WillChicken]

Thanks everyone!!

The siding is white pine from a local saw mill. It was much cheaper than anything from lowes, homedepot, or larger lumber yard.

 

[WillChicken]

Quote:


We live in western NC also. We looked at photos of your coop really really nice!! Julie