My Chicken Coop

[ERRJRDN]

We moved to a rural area 20 miles South of Salem, Oregon in 2017 with the purchase of 2 1/3 acre property. One of the first things we decided to do was raise some chickens in our field. My son first built a chicken tractor for our first batch of chickens we ordered from Cackle Hatchery. His tractor was too small and not very well planned, so I started looking on the internet for coop ideas. I found a design I liked and built my coop from scratch from the pictures I saw. Overall dimensions of the coop and run are 8' x 16' with the coop 8' × 6'. The roof is around 9' at the peak, so I can walk inside easily. Hope you like it.

 

[ERRJRDN]

I started the main coop portion in my shop, and then rolled it out to the field location using a couple of dollies and my JD yard tractor mower to pull it out to my location in the field, then I built the rest of the coop between my shop or out in the field depending on the job at hand. More pictures to follow.

 

[ERRJRDN]

More of the build.

 

[N F C]

Looks like it's coming along nicely! I like the height you made it, it's very helpful to be able to stand up inside a coop.

 

[ERRJRDN]

I "borrowed" the ideal for my coop deign from a company called Carolina Coops, so I will post a link to their page. https://carolinacoops.com/

I really liked the information on their site, and it gave me the idea for my coop. I built my coop for about $1000 in materials. My chickens are out roaming on a good acre during the day, and locked up safely at night, We have raccoons, possums, foxes, and hawks as our main predators, and we haven't lost any chickens to these yet in the two years I've been raising them. I used treated lumber for the ground contact wood, and regular lumber for the rest of the build. We painted all the exposed wood to help preserve it in our climate. (Rain, lots of it!! Don't move here!) Just kidding LOL

We stapled hardwire cloth to to the coop run and back door windows. My daughter was my main helper on this project. I did the framing, she did a lot of the painting and stapling of the hardwire cloth. The penthouse is 2' above ground, so when locked in, the chickens have a 8x16 area to run in protected from the elements.

 

[ERRJRDN]

While building the coop, we ordered more chickens from Cackle Hatchery, and once they were old enough, I let them stay in the bottom section of the coop while I built it around them. The first chickens were already out free ranging, and they would gather around the new coop and inspect the progress.

 

[ERRJRDN]

I finished the roof, added a little ladder to let them walk into the interior of the coop, added the walkway up into the inside of the penthouse. I stapled galvanized fencing to the base of the frame and it extended 2' out around the perimeter of the coop, then we brought in a truck load of dirt and back filled around the perimeter. I wanted to make sure that no predators could dig under and into the coop. The roost bars are 2x4's and there are 4 of them spaced apart.
I have the barn doors on the back that swing open, and the bottom door drops down so I can pull my yard trailer up next to it and just pull the straw and poop into the trailer and then tow it off and drop it in the field, or use some for compost and flower beds. I use the deep litter method for the coop, and it seems to work very well, not a lot of smell to the coop when around it. Also on the back doors I built channels to let me drop in Plexiglas squares into the windows to stop rain or cold wind blowing through in the winter.

 

[HotWingsHoulihen]

Looks great ERRJRDN!

 

[ERRJRDN]

Here's some satellite pictures of our property before I built the coop, and after. Funny thing is, the local Assessor's Office noticed the new building from the satellite picture and came out to inspect what I had built. They thought it was a Tiny House, LOL. She left and said I was ok. Whew

 

[ERRJRDN]

Looks great ERRJRDN!

Thank you, I'm pretty happy with it myself, the only thing I would change about it is, I would have put the door on the far end, instead of the side. I will be making this change this spring, and I also plan to add an automatic opening chicken door. And then gutters on the roof to control the rain runoff better.