Look!! - Sam's - $288 shipping incl!!

[sarahs31]

Adorable for a coop but here's my question.....Would'nt you need to buy 8 of them? How quickly would you grow out of something that size.

Perfect for a self controlled individual.

Who can resisted the fuzzy butts.

 

[NancyDz]

I bought one of the Lowe's play houses last year. it's similar dimensions, maybe a little bigger for the actual building and no porch. It's worked out well, we set it on cinder blocks,
cut a piece of wood to size for the floor , covered it in linoleum. I covered the windows with
hardware cloth and at night I close the shutters but during the day and probably in the summer I will leave them open for ventilation. I attached a run to it and have 6 standard hens using that coop. I only put one nest box and one 4 ft roosting board and all 6 roost
together with plenty of room . I reversed a wall with a window on it to use it as the pop door while building it. It made it really nice as I still installed shutters and close them if it's real cold but leave them open when it's not as I made it the run smaller and more secure so
I didnt have to close it every night. I also let the chickens out of it to free range my fenced yard when I'm home.


Also I didnt attach the floor board to the house, it's light enough to move the whole house over the edge of the board and I just sweep the straw onto a tarp and put it in the compost/garden. Then I hose it out and slide it back. Its heavy enough that predators can't lift it but very easy to clean having done it that way. I'm in a mild climate though so my low is maybe 30 and that's rare. It could easily be insulated though if necessary.


Nancy

 

[jnjross]

Quote:
You said those numbers were off

 

[lilshadow]

I so want that. That is so cute, those would make great breeder pens.

 

[TubbyChicken]

That's cute! But I would hold out if you're interested in getting a playhouse coop. We bought ours last fall and got two, 4x4x6 coops for $75 each. We made a small run, then extended it with some cheap materials and now have less than the cost of this one in both coops and run!

We found ours at Lowes and were told that in the "off" season, all the remaining playhouses sell for really cheap. (It would have cost us more to buy the materials to replicate the playhouses than what we paid).

(ignore the scraps on top of the run, we had a tarp and comforter over the already well insulated coop when the temps dropped in the single digits because we had babies in there...the scraps weighed down the comforter.)

...and ignnore the hoe that's laying in front of the coop...and the bad quality of the picture. LOL Just ignore everything but the actual thrifty coops.

 

[Sissy]

Great coop idea connecting the two.
Really cute set up..
yes LOL I looked at the coops only...

 

[CarlaRiggs]

jnjross,

The measurements at the top state the playhouse is 6x5x6 (or something like that!) But the actual 'coop' area is only 4x4. Obviously you read all the specs!

Carla

 

[echlfan]

TubbyChicken, what is considered the "off-season"

 

[TubbyChicken]

Quote:
I believe it's late summer and early fall. If I remember correctly I was told by the manager that they stock the playhouses in the winter/spring and start dropping prices in late summer with hopes to have them all moved out by the coming winter (when they'll have new product to stock).

I saw several threads about the specific coop we ended up with...the prices were down to 150 per coop and people were going nuts! There were no places close by that still had any in stock. We ended up stumbling across one online for 75 a few weeks later and my husband drove almost 3 hours one way to buy 4 (3 for us and one for a friend).

Our coops have been great! We caulked the roof and seems, added some weather stripping in a few places, created pop doors and covered the windows with a mesh to provide ventilation and still allow sunlight. My husband bought some external locks to make the coops coon proof. I bought some extremely cheap linoleum tiles to line the floor with which makes cleaning a breeze and the floor was easily (and inexpensively) built by my husband. Because we put ours together later in the season, and in the midst of working on our newly purchased house I never had time to add a much needed second coat of paint or touch up the trim around the handles...but that's on my spring to do list (along with planting some window boxes and some sunflowers on both sides. They still make GREAT, inexpensive and cute coops for very cheap.

We also have a ton of space in our run...we built the original run and then extended it using garden stakes, avian netting on top that's tightly zip tied to the rest and chicken wire around the sides (and buried under ground). Again...cheap, easy, and still attractive.

I would keep an eye out and start really searching toward the end of the summer. I *think* we found ours in late August or early September, but I'll check to be sure.

(The assembly time for each coop, with one person working was about an hour.)

 

[TubbyChicken]

I went back and did a search so I could find another example and find out when I found my coop online.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=95029 (another example of a cute coop found for super cheap!)

It looks like I found mine in mid August! They were literally almost twice as much (and that was still a clearance price about 2 weeks before we found it).