post your chicken coop pictures here!

[donniek]

It took a minute...finally got it posted. Always learning something new.

I can get a ton of pallet wood from my job, but since they are constructed from "wet' wood most of the boards are too bowed and warped to use as/is. Hopefully a planer and joiner are in next year's shop purchases. Anyways, I love the purposed wood builds.

 

[Tee-Walk-Chik]

TY!! This is all new to us. This site has been priceless thanks to everyone sharing there journey & advice. I do have a 4" lip on the inside of the nest, hope it works.

 

[jtbass2756]

I can get a ton of pallet wood from my job, but since they are constructed from "wet' wood most of the boards are too bowed and warped to use as/is. Hopefully a planer and joiner are in next year's shop purchases. Anyways, I love the purposed wood builds.

My son's wife got him a used planer for Christmas a yr ago..it has been absolutely awesome to have. He has made his wife a beautiful headboard/footboard for the bed, a bedside table, of course the chicken coop..... but planning those boards have brought them back to their original beauty and he has stainned them and also put a blue/white (they live near the Chesapeak Bay) wash on some...etc. That planer was SO worth the little bit of money she invested!!!

 

[jtbass2756]

I went with the airy feel of a giant bird cage. Next phase will be installing a roof. The open wall in the back will be where the hen boxes will be mounted. Picked up some cedar wedge type planks for the lid.

Absolutely love this...love the airy feel to look at it.

Wish the predators would leave our area alone so we could have this type of "bird cage"..!
Mine would be torn up..

 

[Pecanny]

Quote:
Mine too. Nice urban design. Bad thing, coons are urbanites too. Love the coop. Good luck.

 

[Pecanny]

Quote:
Love the door.

 

[ezicash]

I have the same coop. here is what I have done so far still a work in progress. I am putting bricks all along the perimeter of the run and coop. I have 1/4 inch hardware cloth around and will go around again just as an extra security. I also have the top secure with chicken wire.
I have 3 RIR

 

[bruceha2000]

I can get a ton of pallet wood from my job, but since they are constructed from "wet' wood most of the boards are too bowed and warped to use as/is. Hopefully a planer and joiner are in next year's shop purchases. Anyways, I love the purposed wood builds.

Are you talking a surface planer and a jointer? Gonna be some big bucks so plan to have many projects that need both

I bought mine (and a router) 23 years ago. I bought rough cherry (to match the kitchen cabinets) and red birch (to match the upstairs floors) and made my door and window trim for less (including the cost of the tools) than it would have cost to buy it. Plus, the window sills are custom, deeper than normal so the cats have a place to sit even with the window closed. I also made trim to fit inside the window with channels for the cell shades to run in rather than flopping around and put the casing on with those pieces treated as the "inside edge" of the window frame. Everything else I have made or will make out of rough or repurposed (currently have a lot of 19th century wood from a house rebuild) is "free" or relatively cheap

Kind of like how you get free eggs after your girls have laid enough eggs to "pay" for their coop.

For instance, I needed 8 hard maple newel posts. Everything I found on line that were pin top (rail sits on top rather than running into the post) had a huge length of taper (which while 'elegant' doesn't match the house at all) OR a 3" turning right at the top. My wife didn't want "cap" fittings and the 1 1/2" profile on the bottom of the non cap fittings would like cr@p sitting on the 3" top turning of the standard post. So I bought a huge piece of maple (~$135), cut eight 4' blanks then planed them to 3"x3" at a cost of < $17 each (excluding my labor of course). A local guy turned them for $75 each, making them look like a stock piece except the have a nice short taper above the top turning. The guy who quoted the stairs was going to charge $135 PER POST for plain 3" square posts with a chamfer on the top. I effectively made the same thing for $118 less per post. You can buy a nice thickness planer for the 'saved' cost of < 4 of the posts I made

The stock turned posts would have cost $69 + shipping, my custom posts cost $92 each.

You can buy:
- cheap, pre-primed pine, "finger jointed" (lots of short pieces glued together which will likely work apart over time) - ~$8 for a 7' piece
- a single piece of wood un-primed - ~$18 for an 8' piece
- MDF (wood fibers glued together under pressure) pre-primed ~$16 for a 14' piece
and paint it but I'm not fond of painting wood. Looks fine to start but when it needs to be redone after it starts to chip, the prep work is almost as much as making new unless you don't mind craters in your finished wood.

Or you can buy rough pine for ~ $1.50/board foot (12"x 12" is a board foot. So is 6"x24", 3"x48", 2"x72"). There is some waste so let's say you find a 4" wide board 8' long. That is ~ 2.75 board feet or ~ $4.10 for the casing on one side of a door.

Or you can repurpose old wood like pallets (make sure there are no nails, screws or staples left in the wood!) for FREE.

My chicken tractor/slash hoop coop has slowly gotten heavier and heavier...may have to opt for some 22" wheels to move this mutha...lol

Maybe you need a tractor to pull the chickens' tractor

Bruce

 

[chikmagnet69]

Maybe you need a tractor to pull the chickens' tractor

Bruce

LOL...Try convincing my wife and there'll be one at the house tomorrow.

 

[chikmagnet69]

Looks good...you might try laying down more bricks farther out or find some cheap chain link fencing matl. Lay the fencing matl. flat on the ground. The digger may not be smart enough to start that far away be deterred and lose interest. I'm afraid that one row of bricks will not be enough barrier to prevent something from digging under.