Our original coop was a pretty small chicken tractor. We lost three of our six chickens to the neighbor's dog so free ranging them became very rare. And, we really wanted to not only get our flock back up to six birds but actually expand it to perhaps twelve. It seemed the tractor was too small for six girls to properly exercise in, let alone twelve. So, we started looking for how to set up something that would work better. We spent a lot of time reading anything we could find here and looking at all the great pictures. This is what we came up with:
We bought a 10' x 12' wooden lawn building from a lumberyard. It has a full ridge vent and large double doors. It lacked windows and other features to make a coop, so we went to work. Here we've added windows - opposite of each other - and have framed in the 12' x12' run.
Here's the opposite view showing the run without the 1/2" hardware cloth installed.
We added a partition to separate the 'human area' from the 'chicken area' that will house our supplies and some gardening equipment.
Here's our roost with poop tray underneath. We're using a 'chicken litter' that's actually a horse product to eliminate odor and to make cleanup all so easy.
The nesting boxes are cantilevered outside the coop to save space and make egg gathering simple. Here we had two of the boxes blocked off but they're open now.
This is our chicken door (simple out-swing type, but we drool over the automatic doors out there), and grit feeder (from Petco).
And, here's our PVC pipe / Petco tray feeder. It holds three gallon of feed and works well.
We use wood chips inside and in the nesting boxes, and have just started putting sand in the run (boy, that's gonna take a bunch of bags). We are extremely happy with our coop and thank all of you for being here and giving us so many good ideas on how to build something that works so well for us. Oh yeah, the girls love it too!
We bought a 10' x 12' wooden lawn building from a lumberyard. It has a full ridge vent and large double doors. It lacked windows and other features to make a coop, so we went to work. Here we've added windows - opposite of each other - and have framed in the 12' x12' run.
Here's the opposite view showing the run without the 1/2" hardware cloth installed.
We added a partition to separate the 'human area' from the 'chicken area' that will house our supplies and some gardening equipment.
Here's our roost with poop tray underneath. We're using a 'chicken litter' that's actually a horse product to eliminate odor and to make cleanup all so easy.
The nesting boxes are cantilevered outside the coop to save space and make egg gathering simple. Here we had two of the boxes blocked off but they're open now.
This is our chicken door (simple out-swing type, but we drool over the automatic doors out there), and grit feeder (from Petco).
And, here's our PVC pipe / Petco tray feeder. It holds three gallon of feed and works well.
We use wood chips inside and in the nesting boxes, and have just started putting sand in the run (boy, that's gonna take a bunch of bags). We are extremely happy with our coop and thank all of you for being here and giving us so many good ideas on how to build something that works so well for us. Oh yeah, the girls love it too!
