Plans for a breakdown, snap together urban chicken coop.

[preacherdad]

The problem is that we rent the home we live in. Having chickens (no roosters) in the backyard is okay in the city where we live, but since we rent, the likelihood of having to move is rather high. I think I can convince our landlords to allow it, but I will need to design a coop & run that can be easily broken down and moved in small pieces. So, before I sit down to try and design one, has anyone else already worked up plans for such a thing? Size would be for less than a dozen (more like 6 to 8) hens. Has anyone already put together plans for something like that?

 

[Perris]

such a thing exists. I have 4 of them (started with one and got more as the flock grew). Disassemble for easy cleaning as well as transport. Tough as old boots. Made of recycled agricultural plastic, not cheap fragile stuff.
https://nestera.us/

 

[Ted Brown]

If you are looking to build your own Prince Woods shows how in his book "Modern Fresh Air Poultry Houses" with the KD (Knock Down). It is built with 13 flat panels. The Chapter that describes the build is for 10x16 but he also references a 8x12 and a 6x10. You would need to do some math to figure wall sizes and I would recommend keeping height sufficient to walk in. I used 1x6 rough cut pine boards to build mine, no difficult carpentry. A Woods coop is known to be a very healthy environment, properly maintained.

Good luck!

 

[preacherdad]

such a thing exists. I have 4 of them (started with one and got more as the flock grew). Disassemble for easy cleaning as well as transport. Tough as old boots. Made of recycled agricultural plastic, not cheap fragile stuff.
https://nestera.us/

Wow! I had no idea these were actually being produced. There must be a good market. Thanks for the link!

 

[preacherdad]

If you are looking to build your own Prince Woods shows how in his book "Modern Fresh Air Poultry Houses" with the KD (Knock Down). It is built with 13 flat panels. The Chapter that describes the build is for 10x16 but he also references a 8x12 and a 6x10. You would need to do some math to figure wall sizes and I would recommend keeping height sufficient to walk in. I used 1x6 rough cut pine boards to build mine, no difficult carpentry. A Woods coop is known to be a very healthy environment, properly maintained.

Good luck!

I downloaded a PDF of the book you mentioned and found it very interesting. Haven't yet found the Knock Down designs, but will keep searching. I need some input for how to engineer the KD joints. For instance, how will a side and a back attach to each other and still be easily disassembled/re-assembled? It will be a fun project, especially I love letting this kind of thing just "evolve" as I figure out each step. Still, having some of the engineering worked out will be a bonus, so maybe I can find some ideas in this book. I was raised on a farm in southern Idaho and the designs in this book look a lot like the old chicken house that was still standing in the field where my grandfather first homesteaded back in the early 1900's.

That book is also available on Amazon. Apparently someone has re-published it in paperback.

 

[ChaosMom]

Wow! I had no idea these were actually being produced. There must be a good market. Thanks for the link!

I have a large Nestera. It breaks all the conventional rules of coop sizes, but mine sits on a platform in a fully enclosed (with hardware cloth) 8x15 run. I keep it shaded at all times. My girls love it, and I do too - easy to clean etc., 25-year warranty.

Perris’s flock free ranges, but that is legal and common where he lives, and I think he has much lower predator pressure. We “yard-range” - let them out in semi-enclosed areas in the back yard, only when we’re there.

 

[NatJ]

The problem is that we rent the home we live in. Having chickens (no roosters) in the backyard is okay in the city where we live, but since we rent, the likelihood of having to move is rather high. I think I can convince our landlords to allow it, but I will need to design a coop & run that can be easily broken down and moved in small pieces. So, before I sit down to try and design one, has anyone else already worked up plans for such a thing? Size would be for less than a dozen (more like 6 to 8) hens. Has anyone already put together plans for something like that?

For a run, maybe look into large dog kennels, the ones that are 8 or 10 feet on each side.
Some of them are made of flat panels that are easy to take apart, transport, and put back together later.
Some come with roofs (basically just a tarp) and some without.
Some can be made large by just getting extra pieces, some cannot.
Some have chain link fencing, some have metal wires forming a mesh of rectangles (various sizes depending on the brand.)

Or there is this from Tractor Supply, actually labeled for chickens:
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/producers-pride-universal-poultry-pen-8-ft-x-8-ft-cr0808
Ignore what it says about how many chickens it holds. It's an 8x8 pen, which makes a good run for about 6 chickens (or more, if you get two and connect them). That one has a sturdy wire mesh roof that will keep out climbing or flying predators, which many dog kennels do not have.

For any of these ideas, the mesh is large enough that a raccoon could reach through and grab chickens, or small chicks could walk right out. You can put hardware cloth over the large mesh to make the holes smaller. If you attach a piece of hardware cloth to each section of a pen like that, you can still take it apart and put it together again as many times as you like, but there will be gaps at the corners (more secure than if you skip the hardware cloth, may or may not be secure enough for what you need.)

For a pen that is only used during the daytime, with a more secure coop for night-time use, I have found this kind of pen to work pretty well.

 

[Ted Brown]

I downloaded a PDF of the book you mentioned and found it very interesting. Haven't yet found the Knock Down designs, but will keep searching. I need some input for how to engineer the KD joints. For instance, how will a side and a back attach to each other and still be easily disassembled/re-assembled? It will be a fun project, especially I love letting this kind of thing just "evolve" as I figure out each step. Still, having some of the engineering worked out will be a bonus, so maybe I can find some ideas in this book. I was raised on a farm in southern Idaho and the designs in this book look a lot like the old chicken house that was still standing in the field where my grandfather first homesteaded back in the early 1900's.

That book is also available on Amazon. Apparently someone has re-published it in paperback.

Chapter 5, Page 45.

This is the version I used - Chapter III Page 37

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...y-16-coop-build.1304202/page-36#post-25989111