Well, here's the inside of mine and my guys n gals enjoying their very first night in it!
I saw a post on the board somewhere about 'does a coop have to cost $1000?' so I thought I'd share our design and building material list to show that it really doesnt cost that much to give chickens what they need!
A little about our coop:
I use straw for bedding, and have a hanging feeder and waterer so rodents (hopefully) cant get into their food. We used plywood, 2x4's, and scrap wood for the construction, and it took us about a day to put the whole thing together. We converted the back end of our garage, and the coop now measures 6.5'W by 12'L and 8'T. The coop does not have a window, so for added ventilation, the wall we built is 4'T with plywood, and topped with 4' of chicken wire, held securley in place. This will give them good breezes in the summer and keep the coop fresh. For now while it's cold, we've hung a thick sheet of plastic loosely over the chicken wire to keep out the drafts, and it works wonderfully. We laid a long 2x4 as a roost and put it on a slant leading up to the nestboxes, so that even now they can easily hop on it.
We used 3 sheets of plywood (OSB) at $4.49/each, 4 2x4's at $1.84/each (plus the 6 or so older ones we had laying around for FREE!), part of a roll of chicken wire (50' for $5.29), heavy duty plastic sheeting ($3.50), plus nails, screws, a new saw blade, hinges (one for the chicken door, one for the side door I can throw the straw bales through) and latches all came to about $68. Then off to the feed store for another bag of feed ($9.29), a larger 3 gallon waterer ($10.49), a feeder that holds 15 pounds of feed ($11.39), and a large new garbage bin with locking top for storing their feed all came to about $42. Total cost for everything was just about $110.
We split (ripped..hub says its called...lol) the OSB panels down the middle so that we had 2 panels measuring 2'W x 8'L from each sheet (6 total). We built a basic frame using some of the 2x4's and screwed the OSB panels lengthwise to them, so that the "wall" measured 4'T. To keep them in and predators out, as well as providing wonderful ventilation, we attached 4' sections of chicken wire to the top half of the 2x4 frame completing the 8'T wall. We constructed 4 nestboxes, by making one 'big' one and then putting in deviders where we needed them. We made it so our boxes are each 14"W x 14"L and 12"T (on the sides and back) while keeping a shorter 'lip' on the front of the boxes using a 2x4. I'll try to get some better photos of everything tomorrow and post them here.
