Topic of the Week - Recycling (In) The Coop

[3KillerBs]

I also just realized I could recycle the panels my husband cut out of the coop for the windows. I don't have the fully covered run I would love to have for my chickens, but they can now have some covered dust bathing areas and the pop door can be a little more sheltered from the wind and rain (and soon snow)

Excellent!

I have random chunks of metal roofing in various places and they're useful.

 

[Choo-Choo]

There seems to be a theme around that REAL chicken farmers (at least ones not raising 100,000 birds) would NEVER build a brand-new chicken coop--the tradition is to repurpose whatever is handy, from a shed to a school bus!

I'm heavily involved in the railroad preservation field, and a common theme there is the rescue and restoration of old railroad car or trolley/streetcar bodies that were adaptively reused decades ago as farm storage shed, guest houses, hunting cabins, or--YES--chicken coops!

It is believed hundreds, if not thousands, of streetcars/trolleys nationwide were purchased by farmers as trolley companies went out of business and liquidated from the 1920s through the 1950s, and a great many of them were wooden-bodied cars with little or no scrap value. So car bodies, minus the wheelsets with motors, were sold for a few bucks and trucked out to the farm, to be set up as a cheap chicken coop with windows and a door or two. Obviously, this practice was more common in warmer climates than snowy ones, as the windows offered little insulation. On occasion, if no trolley companies were nearby, a wooden boxcar or caboose could be bought from a local railroad instead.

Decades later, as rail enthusiasts started the active preservation of railroad equipment at railroad and trolley museums nationwide, many of these car bodies would be rescued and restored for either static display or operation. The repatriation of such equipment became so common that the term "chicken coop" came to be used for any such carbody rescued from an adaptive-reuse situation, whether the car served as a guest house or a diner or actually housed chickens at one point.

Here is an example of one such car, a carbody from a Tacoma, Washington system later stored at a railroad shop in Washington State pending restoration:

https://railroadforums.com/forum/index.php?media/byrons-chicken-coop.4366/

 

[Ursuline Chick]

Don't look here in New Orleans, the real street cars (the green ones that run on St. Charles Ave.). Cannot be removed or replaced with newer "models". We are always looking for pieces/parts for repair work, as the men who donated the land for a train to run from the city of Carrollton to the city of New Orleans have a contract. Though they are long gone the contract remains in place. It states that if a train (street cars are considered train cars, as opposed to trollies and cable cars) is ever removed from that land, the land will revert back to the original owners or their families. So here in New Orleans we do not have trollies or cable cars, we have real street cars, which will remain for as long as possible. In the 1960's they were placed on the historic register, I guess someone realized what a mess we would have if they were removed.

 

[RuthBaderGinsbird]

My new coop is almost entirely made from salvage... We did have to buy a couple 2x4s, some plywood, some of the roofing panels, hardware and most of the hardware cloth. We salvaged framing lumber and siding from two neighbors fences, old cabinet doors for windows, got $5 cans of oops mis-mixed paint, took some hardware and some hardware cloth from a free coop (which made excellent window screens), made the ramp out of fence boards and scrap, and got some of the roofing from the extra scraps of a neighbor's project. Bonus: the most weathered wood made for an nice comfy smooth but textured perch for the girls! I still want to refinish the siding and hopefully get some of that redwood sheen back but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for my first building project.

 

[SeaCity]

I have made two coops out of recycled materials that I either already had or got from craigslist or the restore. One is made entirely out of exterior doors. Which is nice because they are insulated & I can open doors on either side of the coop during the summer. Some of the doors have windows which let in the light. Even the steps is made out of skids. The other coop was made from recycled items found on craigslist. Even the fence & metal roofing are recycled items. View attachment 1343253 View attachment 1343254

Love this, going to be on the hunt for doors!

 

[DanielleRiley]

Although recycling has been going on for the past few years, recycling efforts need to be increased, considering the amount of waste disposed of every day. It is important to recycle rubbish correctly! Items not belonging to the recycling process can damage the sorting equipment, resulting in costly delays.

 

[luckycluk]

Don't throw away your old buckets! I will take them off you hands and keep them out of our landfill.

I needed 3 buckets a couple weeks ago and went to Lowes they were charging almost $5 for the bucket and $2.69 for the lids

 

[Perris]

Love this, going to be on the hunt for doors!

I built the flock a dust bathing area almost entirely out of 5 doors I found going free on gumtree; they were listed as interior doors but 4 out of 5 of them are teak, so completely fine with the weather, and 3 of them were glazed so let loads of light in too. Two large panes of toughened glass came from a decrepit old garden shed, and one panel of onduline (bitumized corrugated roofing) was recycled from another shed. Other beams of scrap teak and oak were used for uprights and ridge pole, and there are minimal fixings so it's relatively easy to disassemble and move:

 

[Floof]

I built one of our coops using reclaimed pallet wood, an old window, and cupboard doors someone was tossing out. I did have to buy the metal roofing but the whole thing only cost about $50 and I was able to make it with very minimal skills and my two young kids helping. I lined the inside with feed bags to make clean out easier and let my kiddos paint it with cheap "oops" paint.

 

[MACCanadianCoop]

My coop has been made almost entirely out of recycled materials. Pallets, building materials that neighbours are getting rid of, repurposed decking, shingles for a song from the ReStore. I have had to buy some lumber, and of course the hardware. The floor will be covered in vinyl flooring ends. The people doors are extra doors I got for
free from other people's renos. I've got back a number of tree limbs which I will be able to use for roosts and chicken ladders, and I have plastic totes and buckets waiting to be repurposed into nesting boxes and feeders. It been a lot of fun finding new ways to use these materials!

Thread 'My Homemade Canadian Coop' https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/my-homemade-canadian-coop.1524679/