Hubby built a bigger coop for my birds!!

[BrittBergh]

We have a small pre-fab coop I bought off amazon assuming we only were going to have 4 chickens total, then we ended up with 20!! So we needed a larger coop. I found a lot of pine heat treated boards on craigslist and ended up paying $20 for around 150 1x's so Hubby went to work!




This is the small pre fab coop next to the new big coop.



Hubby and brother building



Attaching the nesting box



Beginning



The ramp leads them down right into their own foraging bed



The side door for cleaning and what not



The nesting box, yes its painted pink...my daughter insisted.



Front of the coop



Looking inside from the doorway





We still have to make the run that encloses both coops together and have the space between them, and put the roosting bars inside the bigger coop but there we have it!! Im so happy my hubby built this for me. Coming from him a year ago saying no chickens ever, to him building this for our chickens and saying he just wants them to have a good amount of room to live and be happy it puts a smile on my face!
We plan on doing the sand/sweet pdz mixture for under the roosting poles in both coops. So we bought some laminate and that is what is inside and on the roofs so rain cannot leak down into there.

Anything you experts would suggest or add or not add? Feel free to let us know this is our first coop build!

 

[JanetS]

Nice job! I'm just wondering if its big enough for 20 chickens.

 

[HomesteadDebi]

Nice job! I'm just wondering if its big enough for 20 chickens.

I was wondering the same thing. What are the sizes of the two coops?

 

[BrittBergh]

We know we have at least 4 roosters (and it looks like there are 2 more so maybe 6 roosters) in this batch of new chicks, they were straight run only. The small coop can hold four but no more the larger is more than double the small coops size. Plus the run will attach between them both. Im sure we will have plenty room!

 

[BrittBergh]

and we cannot keep the roosters. While we have no laws saying we cant have them and no HOA where we are when we talked to all our neighbors about having chickens it was a firm please no roosters, so we do wish to respect them on that stance. Luckily I have homes for them all already, where they wont be eaten for dinner and I can visit them

 

[BrittBergh]

The prefab coop, the actual coop part is only where it looks like a box, the rest is considered the run on that. Its small but holds the four hens. And 4 of the hens we have are bantams not full size.

 

[JanetS]

So how many chickens will you have in the two coops? How old are they now? We thought we had plenty of room in our coop/run when we first put our chicks in
at 8 weeks old. They grew in a hurry. They are 13 months old now and we are thinking we may have to expand their coop.

 

[lcammack]

Just keep an eye out for pecking, and harassing and adjust your numbers accordingly. They should have 4 sq ft per large fowl inside and 2 sq ft per bantam. Then outside they should have 10 sq feet per bird. These numbers will help keep squabbles at a minimum.