prefab chicken coop/run?

[KateAnn]

Hi everyone!

We are brand new to the chicken world and need a little advice. We have 3 Rhode Island reds and 1 silkie, all no more than a month old. We basically rescued them from Atlanta humane society after they were left on a delta tarmack during a thunderstorm. I am in the rescue field so random rescue animals are nothing new for us but this is a first, although I've always wanted chickens. Anyway, we rent and don't have a huge property so we don't want anything to extensive for a coop. They will free range when big enough we just need something for night and if we are traveling. We have been looking at the prefab coops you can order offline for not to expensive and assemble. We basically want advice as to whether that is worth it or if it would be more cost effective to build a custom coop, but we need to be able to move it should we ever relocate. If anyone has a suggestion for a prefab coop that would be great too! It would need to fit all 4 at night and have 2 or 3 nest boxes. About 100% sure the reds are pullets but not sure about the silkie just yet, he appears to be a little younger. Like I said, we are totally new to chickens so any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[estamets]

We have the Clubhouse Coop from My Pet Chicken. Now that we've been using it for a few weeks, I think I would go with the All American instead, and we will probably design and build our next one (in a few years if we move).

I like the Clubhouse a lot for aesthetics, and it has some really nice features like the pull-out droppings tray and exterior access to the nesting boxes and pop door. It's plenty big for our 4 girls, since they have free access to the secure run space, so they're never confined to the tiny coop area. I put it together in about an hour by myself. If you're looking for easy assembly, this is a great choice. We were able to get it assembled and secured in less time then we could have built an equivalent structure. We entertain a lot, and the coop is now a prominent feature of the backyard; we've gotten a ton of compliments on it, so it was worth the investment to have a cute structure in our not-so-big yard.

The things I would do differently:
-thicker roosting poles
-hinge an entire wall for easier access to the interior (and eliminate the hinged roof)

Honestly, we could have easily gotten away with a box with one whole wall hinged to the exterior of the run and a couple of 2x4 roosting poles. A couple of buckets or simple boxes would make great nesting boxes, and it would be easy to make those accessible from the large hinged door/wall.

Best of luck making your decision!

 

[KateAnn]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00AM...165_QL70&qid=1403183400&sr=8-7#ref=mp_s_a_1_7

This is one of the prefab coops we were looking at. Like I said we don't need to much since they'll free range during the day and we need it to be fairly portable in case we move, or just need to move it around the landscape.

 

[estamets]

Why don't you get a chicken tractor? Those are built to be portable, obviously. The pre-fab ones (even my somewhat expensive one) aren't built to be moved- the wood is thin and the hardware won't hold up to transport. Get a tractor!!! They're awesome!

 

[Monguire]

We also went with a chinese-made Pawhut coop kit for our first coop. I'm not a make-from-scratch kinda guy, but give me a baseline to start with and I can jury-rig solutions with the best of 'em. We turned ours into a tractor (we mounted the kit onto a 4x4 frame with a landing gear!) as we wanted to be able to move the girls to fresh grass every few days. I always joke with my wife that I'm like BASF...I don't make the chicken coop, I make the chicken coop BETTER.

For what they are, those Pawhut kits are pretty good for beginners like you and me that don't have the skills/knowledge/time/wherewithal/etc to start from nekkid lumber and build a Taj Mahcoop for our girls. Just keep in mind there are drawbacks. The shipping is usually in the range of "wow, that looks bad" to "is that 30x30 box supposed to be folded in half like that?" Expect breakage in shipping (at least for the larger kits) and have a small supply of wood on-hand to repair/replace/rework in case.

The wood, while lightweight, isn't very strong. I believe our kit to be fir and I ended up reinforcing the stress-points of the coop with 1x2s. The hardware cloth is attached with the gimpiest staples I've ever seen in my life and those staples will almost pop themselves out just by staring at them too long. Wood screws with washers are a must to shore-up that shortcoming and keep critters out of the run.

The heavy, unwieldy asphalt roof pieces on these kits are the most obnoxious thing I think I've ever seen. I took my roof panels/nesting-box lids out of the boxes, picked up all the pieces that broke off in shipping and immediately threw it all in the back of the truck to haul to the dump. They were the worst-engineered part of the kit in my opinion. I ended up using 5mm plywood as the coop roof and nesting-box roof then using smoke colored polycarbonate over the entire coop/run for shedding water. Has the added benefit of allowing a goodly amount of natural light into the run as well. All for a fraction of the weight of the original roofing.

Bottom line, if you pick up a Pawhut kit don't expect it to survive much movement without substantial BASF-ing on your part. They can be GREAT coops/runs with modifications and even kept mostly stock as a baseline from which to formulate how you'd build your NEXT coop. There are things you will like about the kit and things you will hate and you won't know until you've lived with it awhile.

 

[waynem1983]

Honestly, we could have easily gotten away with a box with one whole wall hinged to the exterior of the run and a couple of 2x4 roosting poles. A couple of buckets or simple boxes would make great nesting boxes, and it would be easy to make those from the large hinged door/wall.

Best of luck making your decision!

If i were after something quick, cheap and easy, this would be where i would start. I looked at loads of those chinese balsa wood boxes and all of them, every last one is built from the cheapest flimsiest wood i have seen. maybe in a milder climate they would fair ok, but here in sunny england, they do not last a year. They are poorly manufactured, the wood is prone to splitting upon assembly, more often than not they arrive with parts missing or broken. As well as this, they are way over exagerating how mqny birds they are capable of holding. Have a read through amazon reviews.

get yourself a few large sheets of OSB3 board, a few lengths of 2x4, 5 squids worth of screws, some wood glue and a cheap hand saw. Then buy some bargain bucket mismatched paint and have fun. This would be no more work than trying to repair the newly arrived chinese balsa shed!