how much money have you spent on your setup?

[Teach97]

I don't know but I bet my wife does! Rough quess $1500...birds...well...that is another story...on my third stocking...stupid dogs

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

A lot of great diversity here (which is to be expected). I agree with many of the above comments. It comes down to:

How "pretty" or "fancy" you want it to be
How big it will be and if you have to build it for extreme climate and/or predator problems
How much time you have
How much access you have to free / cheap materials
How much money you have

The same coop might cost one person $1,000 but for another it might be free if they have good connections, don't mind dumpster diving, have a local recycling center with free paint, have stuff lying around, etc.

My first coop fell into the latter group. My dad was in construction and collected a TON of wood, nails, hinges, etc. so my first setup (not pretty, but very sturdy / functional) was free. From there it was a matter of chickens, feed, auto-waterer, hose, and misc. items that probably all didn't total up to more than $100.

 

[JoAnn_WI_4-H_Mom]

Premier Electronet - 42" high
2 pieces @ 168'
1 piece @ 84'
I think around $400

Fencer about $150

Two sliding hoop-house shelters made of scrounged wood, Chicken Wire or Hardware Cloth and Tarps
probably about $150

Miscellaneous Waterers/Feeders/Brooder Lamps
probably about $100

Roll of Orange Snow Fence to partition a Pole Shed into Winter Quarters
about $40

Consumables!
Feed at about $11/bag, lasts about a week for 23 birds
Bedding for Winter Quarters $5/bag looks like we'll need 20 bags for the winter.
Electricity for lamps and fencer - I really do not know

Birds themselves at about $5 a crack for the chicks (we tried to get nice chicks)

My husband may not agree, but it has all been worth it when we see the change in my eldest son, whose project this is. He is so much more responsible now. He cares for them and worries about them. He builds shelters and rotates pastures and collects treats and researches incubation and breeding techniques and walks around doing his chores with a hen or rooster under his arm. It is about the only thing that gets him away from the video games.

When he won the champion broiler pen at the fair...well as the commercial goes...PRICELESS.

He sold those birds for $33 each at the youth livestock auction.

 

[patandchickens]

I dunno, what part of it?

original 3-hen chicken tractor: probably $250ish (could have been much less but I had just had a baby and was not able to scrounge around)

current chicken building: $0 cuz it was already there, plus probably $50 in improvements (basically building a large pen in the open portion)

roofed runs for pens on the side that didn't already have them (6x14 and 10x10): $1000ish

8x8 tractor pen: <$20.


Pat

 

[Megs]

ok my setup is as follows...

2 nice bantam coops (10' circle and 8'X4')- cost about $150 (most of this stuff i scavenged for free as live on a farm and my dad keeps everything so had lots to reuse)
3 doghouse coops (found free online, revamped with scavenged materials)
20X40 knucklehead wire fully enclosed chicken run (divided into 6 runs)- cost approx $300 (again reused a lot of wire, bought posts and additional wire)
12X8 coop w/ 15X25 fully enclosed run- FREE, just fixed up building/run.

so only about $450ish so far just for the setup, still need to add stuff (insulation, replace at least one of the doghouses, add more tractors next year etc)

then there are things like feeders and waterers, i just have plastic feed cups and plastic gravity waterers (a few metal feeder/wateres) so only about $75 into those (so far, replacing as i can afford with nicer)

 

[gryeyes]

Lessee, I built an A Frame, tractor sort of permanent coop suitable for about 8 chickens, using brand new wood and supplies from Lowes - including hardware cloth for the underneath "run" area, bought a 54 gallon Rubbermaid storage bin for a brooder, put up 3 layers of chicken wire & plastic for a "supervised" exterior run, bought the usual plastic feeder, built a "nipple" watering system, and probably spent $180.00 on it all. (Not counting the new circular saw I had to buy to build the coop, but I got IT on sale for $50.00 when I was picking up the supplies to build the coop.)

And then, before I put the 8 chickens out into the A Frame coop permanently, I got a wild hair stuck someplace and bought a pre-fab coop and covered run on eBay for $650.00, free shipping.

It took a screwdriver and 3 hours to put together. (The home made coop took 4 months of weekends and none of the chickens have learned how to go up the ramp into the interior of the A frame.)
I set up the new coop next to the home made coop within the 15 x15 foot exterior run. The chickens get let out into the attached New Coop Run while I'm at work, but on the weekends I open the door on BOTH COOPS and let them run around inside the fenced area around both. They run in and out of both coops, jump up on top of 'em, chase each other around 'em, and have a heck of a good time.

I put the chickens back into the eBay Coop at night. Actually, they go there on their own..... they range in ages from 6 to 9 wks of age. Maybe when they get older they'll figger out the A frame ramp.
The thumbnail photo is of the A frame floor ramp during construction.

Maybe I'll get MORE chickens and need to house them in the A frame at night because there won't be room in the eBay Coop.

So, I spent a lot of money after building one for relatively low cost, but I am not unhappy about it.

 

[ErieSpurs]

I don't want to think about it.

Since we recently moved, we've had to rebuild and start from scratch. So a quick ballpark would be $3500+ for both places. Probably more.

 

[Kerjack]

My coop itself didn't cost me a thing.
Got metal fencing from a contrustion site(had permission haha), Salvaged the chicken wire, nestboxes and door from an older chicken coop on the farm. The coop itself is in a large stall in the barn for no wood was needed, stone walls on 3 sides.

As for watering dishes, and feed troughs it cost me about $7-$8ish.

I'm working on a second coop where I will be able to have a run attached to it, the current coop was only temporary. I'm not sure how much this will cost. All I need for it is posts and chicken wire for the run. The post will be free and I'm hoping the wire as well as there is some lying around. I'm making some new nestboxes out of left of wood. And that should be it.

Haha I feel like I'm cheaping out on my chickens. Poor guys.

 

[gkeesling]

I bought one of those back yard wood storage barns from a guy who had already built it. It is 8x10 and cost me $800. Then i probably spent $200 for the run and other asundry items. So, all told, around $1000 for the coop and run. it's a hobby, and since I've started getting eggs, I've not paid for any feed except from my egg money.

 

[Uzuri]

Everything to this point, food/water/housing/equipment/etc has come to about $1000 -- the chickens are 6 months on the nose today. I'd have to go back through my spreadsheet to be sure, but I feel like about $800 of that was building material, $90 was feed/grit/calcium and the remainder was non-edible supplies.

I'm down to $35 an egg.