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I did my own coop and run. It took a few days. If you are afraid of power saws, you can get some wood that you need cut at Lowe's. I think the first cut is free and anything after that is 25 cents.
On Craigslist or in the paper you can find handymen that work cheap, don't tell them you are single, tell them your hubby "should me home anytime now."
Where there's a will, there's a way!
Hi! I have learned alot about basic carpentry from this website! To drill holes, do a pilot hole first and drilling goes so much better! I use wood screws because they are sharp and drill the best, I rarely use the screws that come with anything I'm going to put together and screw. Also use metal L shaped brackets to join stuff together. Like rafters or to make walls, they use these metal things you drill screws to hold stuff together.
Also do they still teach carpentry or shop in High School? Could you get help from them? What about a Community College? Boy Scouts? Habitat for Humanity? Southern Baptist Mens Group? I hope you can find someone! I wish I was closer!
I got a dog run for free (my sister in law had one she wasn't using anymore) My hubby & friends moved it over here in one piece on a boat trailer. we marked where it was going to sit and dug down 6" , made a skinny trench, and set the pen into it so that it was below the surface level. I tied chicken wire up 18" all the way around with those plastice wire ties, cheap and easy. We made a roof out of a wood frame covered with chicken wire, so nothing can get them from above.
YOU CAN DO IT!! I built my 6x4ft coop on my own (at 55) with only the most basic building skills, and even though some of the edges had to be filled with caulking (because I can't cut straight), it's working great! AND I didn't do the exterior nest boxes until a year later, so they can be retro-fitted in, if you just wanna go with a big box to start.
If you want inspiration, check out the "ugly coop photos" topic:
You can temporily use an old dog house that is what my girls are using right now until I get the new pen/run built. for nest boxes just get some old milk crates and either set them on their sides or cut them at an angle. then put up a couple of boards for roost and there you go then just get some dog kennel panels for the run and cover with welded wire.
Heres a picture of my nest box
Is any of your yard fenced you could use part to that for your run I have a six foot privacy fence that we used for part of the run and just nailed the top to one of the boards on the fence here is a corner of my run its the bottom but you can kind of see what I am talking about if you want I can get pictures of my coop/run for ideas if you want.
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None of it is fenced, but i do have a small pile of landscape boards liek that from where the builders plowed over my garden, and a roll of that same fencing under my porch! I don"t know where it came from, and didn't know what it was, but I have those things! Thanks for the pix!
I'm building my coop all by myself, but that's because my SO told me I had to if I wanted chickens, lol. I have gotten help for a few things, like the concrete piers, because I just couldn't lift them (75+ lbs each)! But every cut, nail, staple, etc... has been put there by me. I still need the cover the roof (debating between a solid sheet of paneling, recycled, or Hardware cloth over it) and paint....and by no means is it square, but I'm proud of it!
Here's a pic from the door looking through to the back wall... The board in the bottom left corner is perfectly sized to cover the large gap in the back for when it's cold/snowy!
And here's a few of the outside from a couple of weeks or so ago (before I got the hardware colth on the corners on the right, where the plywood etc was a little short).
I got tired of cutting non-straight lines and just started putting up boards where they fit, lol. All the spray paint on them is because they are "scrap" pieces from Home Depot's "cull bin" where they offer mostly pre-cut pieces of wood for a reduced amount (51 cents to $2.01) per piece! Lowe's bundles their "imperfect" wood and offers it at a 75% off price...but here anway, it's large bundles and they won't just sell one piece! The frame of my coop is pallet crates, so I didn't have too much to do there. In total it measures 4 ft wide by 6 ft 8 inches long (26.667 sq ft) for my 3 little hens. Giving them roughly 8.9 sq ft each in the coop, I could easily fit 3 more hens in here! To make one large enough for a dozen...I'd just add another set of pallets (the blue on bottom are 4'x3'4" pallets) and voila, it's big enough for 12! I sat mine at a height where I can turn and sit in the doorway, I can also climb in there comfortably...I had to get myself closed in to attach the hardware cloth to the inside of the door, lol.
Shelter doesn't have to be "pretty"...just "sheltery"!
Besides, I count this as my "practice coop"...if I ever figure out how to cut a straight line with a reciprocating saw/circular saw (that I can't seem to figure out how to make go more than 4 inches)/hand saw...I may try again, lol. But next time, it'll be a 4'x8' coop...even if I can only have 5 hens legally!
