Needing advice on a prefab chicken coop for 4-5 chickens!!!

[debbie88]

Hello, I am so excited to be a part of this forum. Thanks in advance for any advice you can share I have never raised chickens but have wanted to for years. Now I have a box of baby chickens and nowhere for them to eventually live. Help! I figure that I have about 5 weeks to get it together!!!

I would like to get a really good prefab chicken coop that I can put together. I would like it to have an automatic door and be really predator proof!!! We have racoons, fox, and possum and I don't want the chickens to get murdered. We can build a run to add to the coop but I think that the coop is beyond me I have looked at ideas here for putting the wire underground, etc.

Does anyone have any happy experiences --- or yucky ones --- with prefab coops? I am not looking for one of the cheap ones on ebay. We live in Louisiana so shipping may be an issue! Our climate is mild winters but really hot summers.

Thanks so much.
Debbie88

 

[cameronfarm]

All the coops I have seen are the "cheap ones" unless you move into the $1k range which is more of a shed. I have not seen any pre-fab coop that wasnt the same / similar unit made of chinese fir. The plastic ones looked neat but small, chickn lock or something like that. You also have to check the size carefully, a lot of them look bigger in the picture then when you get them home

Building a coop really isn't hard, I'm no fan of it though. Did you check your local craigslist to see if you have a local builder who makes them at a decent price?

 

[debbie88]

Thanks for the idea!!! Goin to check now!