Three weeks after my daughter came home with a box of six little chicks, their new house awaits their feathering out.
After a hurried review of the coops, kindly displayed on backyardchickens.com, considering appealing and practical details I began constructing what has become a fairly nice looking, soundly built, safe home for our new hens. I would say it’s well-designed but the process was rather piecemeal. For example; After concluding that I would make a walk-in height run area with a raised coop to resemble my own house, I began by holding a stud upright and marking what I felt would be the lowest ceiling height I’d care to walk under. For placement of the studs, I considered the available widths of Hardware Cloth, nailed them in place and then figured out what to do next… step by step, without a great deal of forethought.
Presented here are pictures and details of the finished coop . As I built the hen’s new residence, I documented the day by day construction process. You can read about the entire process here on this site. You can also find my page at BackyardChickens.com
The nesting box door is detailed with a fake portico, complete with copper lid.
The chicken’s door is heavy and hangs from a rope through a pulley to outside. Pulling the rope, opens the door – the heavy weight brings it swiftly down.
The large operable window has hardware cloth to protect when left open. Below the perch, the floor is also screen to allow droppings to fall through. A plywood piece was cut to insert during cold months.
The coop does resemble the main house.
Now 3 weeks in our care, the chicks are nearly ready to move outside. At the end of the warm sunny day, building day number 20, they were brought back indoors until next weekend when they spent their first night solo.
During construction of this coop, the following wildlife ventured by the building site: Red Fox, Red-Tailed Hawk, Coyote, Skunk, Raccoon and Rat. For these critters I buried the wire below grade and used hundreds of fasteners. Best of luck to the birds.
Want more? Check out the step-by-step.
