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How to Build an Awesome Chicken Coop

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A few months ago I mentioned that we were getting chickens.  We had a ton of wood left over that the old owner left when he moved out so my awesome cousin and his family offered to come down and help us build the coop!  My sister and her family also came and we had one big Chicken Coop Raising Party!!  It was so fun to have so many people come visit all at once!!!  We don’t have detailed measurements for you, but some great steps to building a good coop! Our chickens can’t really be free range since we have tons of hawks, coyotes and other animals that will kill them.  So we will let them out when we are out, but they will mostly be in the coop.
So without further adieu I will let my husband take it from here!  {since I was 9 months pregnant and ready to pop any minute and didn’t really help!}

So… How did we build a chicken coop you may ask? Allow me to tell you how…

1st- I would recommend stockpiling materials far in advance! I do not recommend going to the local hardware store, or Internet, and mass ordering all the stuff you will need, it will skyrocket the price of the coop to the buyers remorse realm and you don’t want to regret a fun project like this! So collect 2×4’s and fencing, snag a remnant piece of vinyl flooring or some barn wood, Old tongue and groove flooring worked great for us.

ou need to call up some very cool friends, or family, and have them bring their kids for entertainment that breaks up the focus and causes you to laugh a bit.

ake some plans on how you want it to look when you are done, research how many chickens you want and how you are going to care for them long term. The website we benefited the most from was backyardchickens.com. ( I wanted the car coop!)

4th-  Pick the spot and get to work. we built the base like a table. four legs of pressure treated wood, screw sides around and boards on top. Then we built the roosting box base and screwed it on.
5th- We glued the vinyl flooring down to help keep anything from scratching up or down through the floor, to help clean up be easier, and to look pretty (until the poop hits it!)
6th- We to start building the frame of the coop. It is just like a house, start with the support pillars (the corners) pick where the door is going to be and frame it in, then place a few more boards in to give support to the walls and give you places to screw the walls on to.
7th- Make the trusses, or roof support, I chose to have a pitched roof so I didn’t have to worry about water or snow staying on the roof. 
8th- box in the roosting box and start putting the walls up. We used old tongue and groove flooring that was stacked up in my garage. It went together easy, cut easy and smelled good when the saw blade got dull and burnt as much as it cut. (Mmmmm I love that smell!) We also cut a piece of plywood in half and nailed it to the trusses for the roof.
9th– We started to staple the wire, I used chicken wire, not because it was chicken wire but because it was free, and it was easy to cut with tin snips.
 10th– Frame in the chicken run and dig a trench around the coop that is 18 inches wide and about 3 inches deep.

11th- Build a door to the run {and smaller one to the side and back of the coop].

 

{This is where we will get the eggs}

12th-Start stapling wire around the base of the coop (inside the trench) to keep pests from digging in (I had to make it coyote proof) then bury it so you don’t have to be cursing my name for giving you the advice.

13th- Wire up the chicken run.{and make sure your son is wearing a helmet 😉 I find it very good to know the the wire is to keep out big and small pests. I decided to double up on the wire so the holes in the chicken wire are much smaller, and to give strength to the wire. Raccoons can reach through the holes I had in my wire and coyotes can chew through one set of wire.


14th- Put some roofing on. I chose shingles to help with the summer heat, and because they were super cheap at the habitat for humanity store! They only take a long nail per tile to place and they will last a long, long time!

15th- Place locks on the doors that can keep the smartest of animals out, and spray some type of protectent on the wood to help it last a long time.
Be sure to put all the kids in the coop to take this fun picture and let them pretend it is a play house until it is full of chicken poop.

Then comes the hard part! Find chicks and keep from getting a rooster {we got 3 out of 7} and put up with them stinking up your laundry room while they get feathers! YUK! they stink when placed in small spaces. Move them out to the coop around 6-8 weeks or if the weather is going to stay above 70 degrees. {We were able to move them out around 5 weeks.}

Let the kids have fun with them!
{And yes we are wearing cowboy boots with shorts…that’s how we roll around here}
And enjoy watching them learn to use this ramp! {It’s pretty funny!}
I hope this helps to encourage you in your desire to build a coop. It really was fun to build and gave us a great reason to get together with people we love to hang out with, the kids all felt like they pitched in and the adults did too (that’s important ;)) The only thing I wish we would have done was build the water bucket before they chickens needed it. I hate doing a fun project under time constraints, that makes it too much like work! {Water bucket tutorial coming soon}
So that’s how we did it! Good luck with yours!!

Comments

  2. This is an awesome tutorial on building a chicken coop. I loved all the picturs. I am going to send the link to my daugher because she wants to raise chickens too.
    Blessings!