New Coop on it's way

[porchpooch4]

I am excited, our five month old chickens are ready to move into their new chicken coop, but first I have to build it. After looking at 100's of idea's I decided to go with a design of my own based off of some very popular rectangular chicken coops. While I like the fancy ones that look like barns and all manner of houses,I am trying to stay low budget yet give our eight hens room to roam and a great roosting and nesting area. I have attached a .pdf file for the front view only. I have decided to build the walls similar to housing construction with the 2"x 4"s on 2' centers except for the door and coop area. I am using pressure treated 4" x 4"s for the base. We do not really have a lot of predators in town so I decided not to put a wire mesh below the foundation. We will close the coop door every night though just to make sure no one gets a late night snack. I will take pictures and post as everything progresses. In case you are wondering, it will be six foot wide. I was going to use my CAD software to sketch this up but it felt too much like work so I did a simple sketch concept.

 

[1muttsfan]

Once you have chickens in the coop, it will attract predators, trust me. This would be the best time to put in predator controls, it is much harder to retrofit a coop.

 

[Mamatomany123]

Well, you either add the correct protection before or after you lose birds but you will add it eventually.

 

[porchpooch4]

I think as long as we shut the door to the coop each night we should be fine. We have not had any issues yet with the smaller coop. Not a lot of predators in our city of Gilbert Arizona. I did see a stray coyote running down the street about a 1/4 of a mile away about two months ago. I am not sure if they can jump 6 foot block walls. If he does, he will meet an early demise. We carry here in Arizona just in case.... ;-)