My box coop - almost finished!

[DianeS]

I expected to have my new arrivals (four RIR hens) sleep in a dog crate for a week until I could borrow a truck to buy plywood to finish my coop. BUT! I went to Lowe's for something else tonight, and came across a sale on birch and oak 2x4 shelving. That shelving fit in my car, and only increased the cost of my coop by $10. I'll need to change some parts of it later, like making the roof slope and making the windows closable, but for now it will do just fine! I'm calling it my "box coop" because it really just looks like a big box. Nobody but me really knows how much work went into it! LOL!

The front isn't attached yet, but that just makes it easier to take the pictures. The chickens get picked up tomorrow!

Here it is from the front:

And from an angle:

 

[Fenika]

Nice, and I like how you framed the roof.

Question though- Is that a crack in your roof? Do you have it set up/angled to keep the rain out?

 

[DianeS]

Yeah, that came out rather neat, didn't it? Yes, the roof has a "crack" in it because I nailed one section in the wrong place and it left a gap of about two inches. I decided it was less work to just cover it rather than pull off the wood and do it over, and the piece of thin wood I had left over was warped in the middle... which ended up making a perfect little vent on the roof! Wish I could say I did it on purpose

 

[mgw]

 

[justbugged]

What are you planning to do come winter? Are you planning to add a perch, and a nesting box? What are the measurements of your coop? Oh and congratulations on your find at Lowes.

 

[Erock1234]

Good job can't wait to see more pics. I can definitely understand the car vs truck thing on my urn I put the back and front seats down in my sentra and was able to get 30 2x2x8's in there

 

[DianeS]

This coop is 4x4. Well, I think the inside ended up being 4 foot and 1.5 inches by 3 foot 11 inches, because of the different ways I turned the 2x4 frames. But close enough.

It will have four inches of pine shavings on the floor to start. The coop is going up on stilts eventually to make cleanout easier.

No worries about winter. The plans for the coop over the next few weeks include shutters for the upper windows, and a second layer of wood on the outside of the frame (leaving a 1.5 inch gap in between that I can insulate if I want). The days here are still in the 80s so I have some time for those additions. I will replace the flat roof with a sloped one before we get snow.

The nest boxes (2) will be in the front wall of the coop.

I don't have a roost yet becasue the only place I have to put it is right in the draft from those big upper windows. So they'd end up sleeping on the floor anyway to get away from the breeze, so I won't bother with the roost until I can close the windows at night. In the meantime I'll just clean the coop more frequently.

Thanks for all the feedback! I've never had chickens before, so its good to know I'm not botching things up already!