Turning a dog house into a coop

[Circe]

My husband and I are new to this, and we are thinking of turning our old dog run and dog house into a coop/run. The run is about 10 or so feet long and about 4-5ft high, and the dog house was big enough for a large lab. Can you give us any pointers into accomplishing this? Thanks!

 

[bburn]

I did it and my rooster would not sleep on it but slept in it. MY doghouse was not big enough for a lab really but maybe a dog a little smaller. The first thing to undersand about chicken keeping is you are going to love it and two or three will not be enough.

There is a square foot per chicken thing that I never remember but someone will come along and tell you what it is.

BUT....the dog run will work and it is what we used except ours was really big. Find out the square foot per chicken for run AND coop so you can determine how many chickens you can have for your space and then decide if the dog house is big enough. You can always just expand the dog house if you need to. Also a search on here of small coop designs will help give you ideas.

You are going to have so much fun!

 

[mljohnson05]

First

from Missouri and

How many and of what kin of chickens are you wanting to keep in there??
in general.... you need 3-4sq feet of coop space per full grown standard chicken and 10 sq feet of run space per chicken.


But dog house coops and runs are great...here is a link to the dog house conversion (easier to show than explain ): https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=178721

As far as the run...you will need to cover the chain link with Hardware cloth to protect from predators and an apron on the ground to prevent the diggers are great too....

feel free to ask more questions.

Best Wishes,
Laura