Struggling with affordability of coop

[Hopperkiller]

Visit constructions sites and ask builders if you can get some of the scrapwood. They hire someone to haul it off when finished. Some landfills have this type of waste dumped in an area away from other garbage and let people get some for a small fee. Anything from pallets to old cedar fence boards are better options than those flimsy prefabs sold in the stores. Taking the time now to build a decent coop will save heartaches and money later. Some owners have made some clever and goodlooking coops from recycled materials.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Ditto from me great post

 

[Hopperkiller]

Ditto from me great post

I reckon you can tell i am sort of a Sanford type of person. Just helped a friend tear down a barn built in 1920 so he could save some money building a shed for calves and other projects on his place. I hope i can learn to be as creative as some people's examples seen in this forum. Thanks

 

[blackdog043]

Option 2: Buy building materials from the hardware store
I threw everything (studs, OSB, plywood, roofing, treated posts, hardware cloth) into an online cart at Home Depot and came to about $500. I imagine my actual cost would be higher because I'm sure I'm not accounting for everything.

I vote for this option, but please spend the extra money now and make it 8 x 8, you won't be sorry, when chicken math sets in!
My motto on some things is cry now or cry later. So spend the extra money now and do it once, the way it should be or you will be crying and building another coop or adding on down the road and saying, I should have just spent the extra money the first time and been done. Plan on $700.00 with screws, nails, misc hardware... Check out Amazon and walmart.com for your hardware cloth, they are usually cheaper than big box stores. Also scrounge around for 2 x 4's & pieces of plywood. They come in handy when you need smaller pieces and don't want to cut up a new piece of wood. I would use new 2 x 4's for the wall framing, it will be easier to make them straight.

I built an 8 x 12 lean to coop and spent about $900.00, on the coop only, including everything inside it.

 

[paintedChix]

Surprising not to see anybody suggest a hoop coop made from cattle panel. You can make them pretty inexpensively - going up in cost with heavier support framing (2X4, 4x4, 4x6 & 2x4 vs 2x2) or a metal/plastic type roof vs a tarp. 2 - 16' x 50" panels now cost $21/each at our TSC (this will make a coop approx 8' x 8' x 6' tall). Then when you are ready to expand it or build a run, you can use the same cattle panels.

Recommend doing the extra cost and going with hardware cloth instead of chicken wire.

There are several different designs right here on BYC - from a "tractor style" (w/ & w/o wheels) to LARGE, heavy duty, permanent coops. You could build a wood bottom frame to attach it to, use fence posts on the outside of the panels to hold them in place or my my new one will have stacks of two tires to hold the panels in place (I'll see if it works).

You can use wire, zip ties or even haystring or paracord to attach the panels together and attach the wire to it...

Lots of different water/feeder & nesting box options. Open floor to dirt or could put hardware cloth in to keep predators out. Lots of door possibilities - from building your own to purchasing - new or used. I used a 5 gallon bucket inside of a wood frame as a pop door (some of the girls lay their eggs in that, tho!).



These are nothing fancy. The first one cost about $200 and the 2nd & 3rd cost less as we already had some of the supplies. They have survived two hurricanes; 3 major rain events with more than 9" of rain in just hours and a whole lot of wind. Two have been thru major moves & resets and the 3rd was moved once (1st move was approx 10 miles on the highway; 2nd was 25 miles - they were moved via flatbed trailers). At previous property, we had pasture even enough to pull them by hand. Here, they were "parked" when we found that w/o wheels, haling them around was tearing them up on all the hillocks of bunch grass in our sand. After moving to this property, I also put 1/2" HC skirting around two of the 3, to keep critters out, so more expense.

You could even do a pallet shed for more support/protection. This one was held together with haystring for 3 months at temporary pony quarters, while we were closing on our new place.... & putting up fencing to hold them all at our new place after closing. The pallets were $2 each and are 48" x 48". The back wall is made from a door that had been left at the curb & I picked up.



After moving the ponies & disassembling this "shed", I put together 2 new ones at the new property - fully expecting to make them permanent... They are still standing, still in use and still put together with haystring, though they are awaiting a permanent set of cinder block footers, being screwed together once leveled and a different roof layout instead of the tarps ... They work. LOL,

 

[RESQME49]

Check out " The Original Chicken Man " in Orting. I just got a coop off of him. Do not buy a kit! I ordered one from a company in Marysville online and it turns out, they order them from China in mass quantities. They are super cheap and people are getting screwed! At the bare min, check out the Chicken Man. I got the https://seattle.craigslist.org/tac/grd/d/the-ultimate-coop-6-feet-tall/6466495291.html
And I had them extend the run another 6 feet. I have 7 chickens.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

You certainly can spend $500 to $1000 on a chicken coop, and if that is what you want to do, that is great.

However, you can re-purpose a lot of things into a chicken coop.

We took several company packing crates (the kind used to haul trade exhibits) and placed them on top of an old grape arbor...that became our brooding hutch.

Our original coop was a rebuilt swing set with ending slide/fort area.

We managed to burn that to the ground (with electrical heat lamp on an extension cord...don't do that), and rebuilt with a cast off fab coop from a friend. We extended it to make it bigger, then kept the kid's old fort on the other side of the swing set and created another coop.

I have 3 different coops, with pens, two about 6 x 8 and the brooding hutch about 4 x 6. I placed them knee high for easy clean out (my back hates shoveling).

While not your pretty as a picture type you seen in magazines, they have housed chickens for the last 5 years with little worry....and I live in rainy Portland.

So, if you've got the cash and the desire, buy good materials and build one. But, if money is an object, you can get coops that last using a fraction of the price.

LofMc (photos below)

Building first coop from the kids old swing set...fort/slide become coop...swing area, using A frame became the pen.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

...sorry BYC photo upload is glitchy and second try to get multiple photos in the same post.

First photos below is our brooding hutch out of packing crates sitting on a grape arbor. We re-purposed a car port tarp to cover that run.

While not Sunset Gardens perfect...it is very functional and not an eye sore.

LofMc

 

[CapricornFarm]

Idk if anyone mentioned it but most prefab kits exaggerate how many chickens their coops house. Divide by 2 and you might get a realistic number.

 

[PirateGirl]

What is affordable and cheap to you may not be to other people. Know your budget in advance and plan accordingly. This recent thread has lots of good ideas about how/where to find coop materials and various things that can be re-purposed, swing sets, dog kennels, sheds, raiding construction site dumpsters, asking big box stores for pallets, etc.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/tips-on-building-a-cheapo-coop-and-run.1213627/

I thought I had built a cheap chicken coop with mostly salvaged materials. A year later I built my duck coop and run and managed to cut down my cost to almost half and cut down construction time even more with good planning. Both were definitely cheaper to build than to purchase pre-fab, even if I had bought all new materials and did not salvage so much.

I don't think you should have to purchase plans or a kit with the wealth of knowledge found here. Many of these projects include extensive materials lists as well.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/category/chicken-coops.12/