"Honey, I'm building the coop!"

Sep 25, 2020
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S. Coastal NC
After years of dreaming of having my own chickens, and reading and obsessively-learning (my favorite hobby!), I'm finally starting the coop building journey!
I finally have something to start giving back to this wonderful community, and I'm excited to share the process with you all! :love

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To preface this project with just a little about myself & my little family; we live in the Southern Coastal region of North Carolina, and are beginning the journey to a larger scope of self-sufficiency than we have ever had in the past. Like everyone else, we've found the past year or two to be a catalyst in taking charge of our own needs, and the idea of 'just doing it ourselves' in regards to growing, making, processing, and preserving our own food has finally started becoming a reality! :D It's been a learning process because we're a couple of millennials that grew up fairly detached from agriculture 🙆‍♀️ (except my childhood was somewhat agri-focused until my early teens, so I have some experience.)

We're currently building a home on land we're going to be sharing with multiple family members of my husband's family! Our little slice is 1 acre cleared of trees, with just over 2 acres of forest next to it. All in all we're all living on 10 acres together! I'm planning on growing enough food to feed our homes, with enough extra to hopefully give to close friends and neighbors! :weeWe'll be right outside of town, and many of our neighbors have livestock of some sort (and the local ordinances in our county list poultry noise as an exception to any noise complaints!)


TL;DR: "....and then they were homesteaders..." :highfive:

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On to the bit you're here for...the coop! I'll be updating this thread as we go along. I hope this inspires someone out there. <3 If not, it'll at least be fun for me to go back and see the process. ☺️



What we have so far! (as of 11/5/2021)

The beginnings of our 8(w)x8(d)x4(h) coop! I was super stubborn and started without my husband (he wanted to wait until we moved into our new house, but of course I have other plans 😏). My son was kind enough to hold beams so I could at least cobble it together for a start. I'm a very visual person, so having the framework there in place is so helpful.

A cold day, but a good start!

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Another angle of the coop, (our new house is coming along too!)

photo_2021-11-06_09-08-26.jpg


My super helper, ready for the task! 🥰


photo_2021-11-06_09-48-09.jpg


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We eventually want to build a small barn for chickens, goats and rabbits, but for now we're being realistic and starting smaller and getting the flock established in a mid sized coop! We're going to have 4000sqft of fenced in grazing area, which includes a small slice of the forest so the chickens can forage in a more natural environment. The coop will be predator proof so they can be safe at night, and we're looking into options for predator proofing the free ranging area (possibly netting? It seems like such a pain though, especially if we get hurricanes blowing through. 🤔)

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Hope you all have a wonderful day! Thanks for reading!
 
we live in the Southern Coastal region of North Carolina,

:frow from the Sandhills!

DH and I are beginning homesteaders too.

The beginnings of our 8(w)x8(d)x4(h)

You might want to think twice about a low-roofed coop like that now while you can still make changes easily. IMO, any non-walk-in coop that you can't lean into the access door and touch every corner is suspect -- including my Little Monitor Coop where I have to recruit tall teenage sons to retrieve chickens who have wedged themselves stubbornly into the back corner where I can't reach.

In addition to backaches (building materials are cheaper than chiropractors), there is the potential for this problem when you have to climb in there: https://www.backyardchickens.com/posts/24739256

We non-mountain North Carolinians live in a perfect place to build Open Air coops, since heat rather than cold is our major challenge and thus extraordinary ventilation is critical. My personal experience is that if I can't put my coop into the shade -- natural or artificial -- I need at least double the usual recommended ventilation, sometimes more, to keep the thing from turning into an oven.
 
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I agree about being able to walk into the coop. The top of your head and your back will thank you. It also gives you many more possibilities for ventilation up high, where it will do the most good.

My coop is built on a trailer, and I considered enclosing the area underneath for more room in the run. To get under it, though, I'd be on my hands and knees. In the dirt and chicken poop. Trying to wrangle a chicken out of the back corner would have been a total disaster. And what if they decide to lay eggs under there? So I never enclosed that area, and I'm glad.
 

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