My "Free" Eggs are costing me a FORTUNE! - ITS DONE!! pg 15 pics

[offmyroost]

To all of you who actually have added up the expense of finishing your coops--I am in awe. I'm not brave enough to get out the receipts and calculator. We started with an old porch that was attached to the mobile we lived in while building our house. The porch was very well built (by DH) so I was thrilled that it could be put to good use. I thought it would be as easy as throwing up some siding and doors. Silly me. Oh well, the chicks are in the coop and I am loving being a chicken mom.

 

[Heathero617]

Again...i am SOOOOOOOO overjoyed that mine has yet to cost me a dime! My eggs will still only cost as much as the feed once i get eggs again!

 

[Kudzu]

The way I look at it, the more expensive, the better the egg, of course I have this opinion because I have very expensive eggs.

 

[Chemguy]

Hi All. I'm in the starting stages of gathering the materials to make a 4'x6' raised coop with a 12'x6'x6' enclosed run. My plans for the coop have evolved a little bit, based on the availability of scavenged materials. Since I don't yet have any chicks, I can afford to be patient in this way. Based on what I've seen in this thread and elsewhere, I think that I'm definitely going to wait to order my chicks until the end of the main part of construction is in sight. To date I've spent $20 on six 4"x4'x4' posts for the base. That's where I am at this time; I know that I will spend far more than this over the next several weeks, especially on hardware. I'll post here ocassionally with updates. The goal: keep the total cost under $400.

 

[Chickenaddict]

When we built our new coop last year we were trying to keep expenses under a grand.... well even with recycled material and windows that were brand new for $10 each we spent $1,700 on it. Ours is 10 by 16 but 4 ft of it is a cedar front porch. We still have the expense to paint it, put plywood over insulated walls and run electric to it.

 

[CluckCluck18]

Don't feel bad...you are not alone. I had a friend help build mine and I didn't really have any idea what it would cost. Those dear, sweet guys can get carried away with their building projects. And it took FOREVER to get finished while my 6 chicks were growing like weeds in the garage !My coop is awesome and has a baseball theme, with antique baseball bats for door handles, etc and it's called fowl territory! In the end if I include cost of delivery for marble chips and sand for the run I came in for about $1,000. I joke that it's nicer than my house and I think it's way stronger too. I live in Florida and I always joke that I'm going in it if we get a hurricane or tornado

I don't regret it though and it's holding up very well after the first year. We also had so many laughs and tons of fun. We had no clue what we were doing and our only good resource was this website!

 

[maybejoey]

We had an old dog shed and we just converted it into a chicken coop. Cost a round 200$ total with accessories and everything. So just try to find a old dog house or a shed or something and use recycled materials for sure.

Good luck

 

[yellowjacket]

$350 total for mine, 8'x10'.

All recycled materials except for the cedar siding which was a good deal for a truck load.
The biggest expense was the welded wire I bought from Rona. I wanted a big pen and a little "safety" pen so they had tons of room to run around!

 

[bloom_ss]

Mine cost me $200 for the coop, at least $75 for the paint and supplies for the coop, and $300 for the run. We bought the coop from a local man on Craigslist, painted it, and then built the run ourselves. Honestly, I was only planning on spending around $300 total...we kind of jumped in to it not really knowing how much stuff would cost to get the chickens all set up. Add in the fact that we had to BUILD a gate to get the coop into our back yard (which cost about $400) and these are some expensive chickens! LOL When we bought the coop we had not considered that this house we just bought had no way to get anything wider than a regular door width into the back yard. Now we have a 9 ft wide gate (which we had intended to build anyway eventually, just not right now...lol) and we can easily get anything in to the back yard.

 

[njduck]

I don't look at the costs of stuff like that. It is all part of farming and I have to have it or need it. However my DW is quick to tell me how much I spent. The good thing is I do alot of cash business so she only sees what goes through the checking account. Also remember that the coop will last along time so divide that cost up over the number of eggs you will get in the long run.