Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase. Psalm 85:12
We are currently using 3 chicken coops for 38 chickens. Two of the coops were designed and built by my husband and the other belongs to my mom, who lives close by.
Each of the coops has things that I really like and other things that need work in order to function properly. As we tour the coops, I'll talk about the real life perspective of each coop, what has worked really well for us and what hasn't worked so great. Hopefully this will help others to get the most out of their coops when designing them.
Today I'm going to take you on a tour of the first coop my husband built.
The first coop is home to "The Originals." These are the chickens that the boys and I spontaneously picked out at the feed store in April 2018. We purchased 10 chicks that day: 2 White Leghorn pullets, 4 straight-run Buff Orpingtons, and 4 straight-run Rhode Island Reds. 2 of the Rhode Island Reds ended up being roosters, one of which was aggressive to the other chickens as well as us humans, so he went to Freezer Camp, leaving us with 9 chickens: Hei Hei, our Rhode Island Red Rooster, and his 8 beautiful ladies.
Their coop was the first that my husband built. He gathered as much recycled lumber and materials as he could find and saved us lots of money by doing so.
In designing this chicken coop, I went purely by what I read and researched. None of the insight was from personal experience because, at that point, I had no personal experience. All of it was found online from reading dozens and dozens of websites, blogs, and forums.
So, being the professional chicken coop designer that I was, here's what I thought would be good for the chicken coop:
- 3 square feet of floor space per bird
- 10 square feet of outdoor run space per bird
- 12 inch square nesting boxes
- One nesting box per every 3 hens
- 8-10 inches of roosting space per bird
- Nesting box access from outside the coop
- Roosting perches positioned above the nesting boxes
- Easy to clean
- Shade and sun in outdoor run
I basically gave my husband my "want" list, and, like the wonderful, crafty husband he is, he got to work building the most beautiful log cabin chicken coop I have ever seen.
This coop is big enough to accommodate 12 chickens. It is 6 feet wide by 6 feet deep with about 4 or 4 1/2 feet walls. The coop is also raised about 4 feet off the ground. (I'm going by memory on the wall height and the raised height. I can't remember the exact measurements on those.) The reason for the raised coop design is to allow more outdoor space for the chickens without actually taking up more space.
With the coop being off the ground, he thought it would be possible for a strong wind to lift or tip the coop over so he dug holes for the legs and put bagged cement into the holes around the legs. The coop is extremely heavy, so I doubt it would be lifted or tipped over anyway, but I'm glad he took the extra precaution to protect our flock.
All the walls are the same height. The slanted roof is created by extra 2x4s placed at the top of the walls, under the 2x4 ceiling beams at the front of the coop. The 2x4 ceiling beams are placed vertically to add ventilation on all 4 sides with more ventilation in the front due to the slanted roof. The ventilation spaces are then covered with 1/4 inch hardware cloth. We thought this might help keep bees out of the coop, but it hasn't made any difference. It would have to be a screen to keep the bees out. Hopefully we'll be able to get that added in the spring.
The nest box access is on the side of the coop. It has a slanted, shingled lid so that any water will easily run off the top. There's a silver handle attached to open the lid. My husband uses the handle often, but I have personally found it useless because I'm too short to open the lid that way. Instead, I put my hand under the bottom of the lid and push the lid open.
The block of wood you see on top of the lid is used to prop the lid open. The lid is heavy due to the shingles being on it, so, even when using the prop, I keep my hand in position to support the lid so it doesn't fall and knock me in the head when I'm peeking in to see if I have any eggs to collect.
There are 3 nesting boxes for our 8 girls. They are about 18 inches off the floor and each one is 12 inches square (give or take a little due to the slanted lid on the outside). The one on the far right is a little smaller than the other two. My husband messed up something with it, but I can't remember what it was and it doesn't matter anyway. The chickens haven't complained about it one bit and they use it all the same. You want the nesting boxes to be enclosed and fairly small so that the hens will feel comfortable and safe in them. You don't want them cramped, but you don't want them to have lots and lots of room either.
The roosting perches were placed higher than the nesting boxes to the right of the nesting boxes and on the wall opposite the nesting boxes. Putting the roosting perches higher than the nesting boxes is to discourage the chickens from using the nesting boxes for sleeping. This is really important because they do a lot of pooping at night while they sleep, so if they are sleeping in their nesting boxes, they are going to poop in their nesting boxes and then you'll have dirty nesting boxes to clean out every day. Nesting boxes should be cleaned immediately if you find they have been pooped in. It's a lot of added work for something that can be easily prevented.
Roosting perches shouldn't be directly in front of or over the nesting boxes either because the girls will step in poop and transfer it to the nesting boxes, yet again, causing a mess. So keep the perches higher than the nesting boxes and not directly in front or over of the nesting boxes.
I use pine shavings as bedding for the chickens as well as for their nesting boxes. As you can see from the picture, the girls will sometimes throw shavings on their backs when laying an egg. I guess it's instinct to help conceal them from predators.
Even though one chicken takes up pretty much the whole nesting box, I have seen two chickens in a nesting box at the same time while the other 2 nesting boxes were empty. It doesn't look comfortable when two are in there, but when their favorite nest is taken, they are willing to share.
In the picture above, you'll see one of the roosting perches to the left of the door. There's a longer one to the right along the far wall that you can barely see in the picture. The chickens prefer the shorter roosting perch and, even though it's not very long, 5-6 of them will sleep on it.
The chicken door opening is 12 inches wide. I can't remember the height of it, but the actual door, it blocks part of the opening and leaves it at roughly 12 inches high. The door is placed inside a casing of sorts to allow it to slide open and closed. A board is attached to the beams above the door to work as a "door stopper". There is a paracord string attached to the top of the chicken door. The string goes through a series of eye-hooks along one of the ceiling beams to the back of the coop then between the top of the wall and the roof and ends on the outside of the back wall behind the human door where there's a hook to attach it to. This allows me to open and close the door from outside the coop in case I need to shut the chickens in or if I need to catch a chicken. I do wish the string was attached to the side of the coop instead of the back. That would allow me to make sure none of the chickens were under the door when I close it. As it is now, I have to have another person to help me when I close the door to make sure I don't close it on a chicken.
The human door is extra wide to make it easier to clean the coop. The outside of the door was painted in a chocolate brown, oil-based paint to keep water from damaging it. There's also a lot of overhang from the roof on the back of the coop so I can stand under it to check on the chickens and fill their feeder and drinker in the rain without getting wet. The outside of the chicken door was painted with the same paint.
Cleaning the coop is not something I was looking forward to, so I wanted to make it as easy and painless as possible starting with the design of the coop. The coop floor was painted with the same chocolate brown, oil-based paint that as the doors so it wouldn't flake off and would add some water-resistance to the coop floor. This made it a breeze to scrap droppings without damaging the floor.
Where the floor meets the door is flat. There's no door casing on the floor. This allows me to push a wheel barrow or wagon to the back door and pull the shavings out the back door with a hoe or rake. Then I can go inside, sweep the shavings straight out the back door. All I have to do then is replace the shavings and I'm done. The only downside to this part is that shavings will come out the back door when you open it and sometimes they get clumped up around the door and where the door hinges are and that keeps the door from shutting properly. I, then have to move the shavings out of the way so I can shut and lock the door. It's a minor inconvenience. I highly recommend this part of the design if you're building a small coop like this one.
The feeder and drinker aren't hung yet, but they will be. The chickens love to dust bathe in the shavings and, for some reason, the spot right behind their feeder and drinker is where they most enjoy dust bathing so they end up getting shavings in their water and food. Hanging them will decrease the mess they make.
My husband built a ramp for the chickens to enter the coop. The ramp has cross bars attached to help them get a grip on the wood. He nailed the cross bars on. I highly recommend screwing them instead of nailing them. Some of the cross bars have popped off of our ramp. I've replaced some of them and still others have popped off and need replacing now.
He built the run and added wire all the way around it. Predators aren't a huge problem so chicken wire sufficed for the job. The wire goes underground around all the sides of the coop and run and it also goes across the top of the run as well to keep any aerial predators out.
He then concreted about a foot out from the front, back, and sides of the run. The concrete is to keep digging predators out (mostly our dogs). This part backfired, as you can see from the above picture. When we've had a lot of rain, we get this massive mud puddle in the run and it takes forever for it to dry out completely. In the spring, we'll be working on a drainage system for this coop. This one corner is where all the water goes so this will be our focal point of the drainage system.
The wood box you see on the left-hand side of the above picture is a grazing box. This is where we grow grass for the chickens to eat. The chickens are able to peck the grass inside the box without killing the grass. Once the grass grows too high inside the box, the box is moved to another location inside the run and more seed planted inside it. The chickens then eat the grass from the area where the box was moved while new grass is growing in the box in it's new location inside the run. These have been a huge success and the chickens love them so we will definitely be adding more of these in the spring.
With the coop being off the ground, he thought it would be possible for a strong wind to lift or tip the coop over so he dug holes for the legs and put bagged cement into the holes around the legs. The coop is extremely heavy, so I doubt it would be lifted or tipped over anyway, but I'm glad he took the extra precaution to protect our flock.
All the walls are the same height. The slanted roof is created by extra 2x4s placed at the top of the walls, under the 2x4 ceiling beams at the front of the coop. The 2x4 ceiling beams are placed vertically to add ventilation on all 4 sides with more ventilation in the front due to the slanted roof. The ventilation spaces are then covered with 1/4 inch hardware cloth. We thought this might help keep bees out of the coop, but it hasn't made any difference. It would have to be a screen to keep the bees out. Hopefully we'll be able to get that added in the spring.
The nest box access is on the side of the coop. It has a slanted, shingled lid so that any water will easily run off the top. There's a silver handle attached to open the lid. My husband uses the handle often, but I have personally found it useless because I'm too short to open the lid that way. Instead, I put my hand under the bottom of the lid and push the lid open.
The block of wood you see on top of the lid is used to prop the lid open. The lid is heavy due to the shingles being on it, so, even when using the prop, I keep my hand in position to support the lid so it doesn't fall and knock me in the head when I'm peeking in to see if I have any eggs to collect.
There are 3 nesting boxes for our 8 girls. They are about 18 inches off the floor and each one is 12 inches square (give or take a little due to the slanted lid on the outside). The one on the far right is a little smaller than the other two. My husband messed up something with it, but I can't remember what it was and it doesn't matter anyway. The chickens haven't complained about it one bit and they use it all the same. You want the nesting boxes to be enclosed and fairly small so that the hens will feel comfortable and safe in them. You don't want them cramped, but you don't want them to have lots and lots of room either.
The roosting perches were placed higher than the nesting boxes to the right of the nesting boxes and on the wall opposite the nesting boxes. Putting the roosting perches higher than the nesting boxes is to discourage the chickens from using the nesting boxes for sleeping. This is really important because they do a lot of pooping at night while they sleep, so if they are sleeping in their nesting boxes, they are going to poop in their nesting boxes and then you'll have dirty nesting boxes to clean out every day. Nesting boxes should be cleaned immediately if you find they have been pooped in. It's a lot of added work for something that can be easily prevented.
Roosting perches shouldn't be directly in front of or over the nesting boxes either because the girls will step in poop and transfer it to the nesting boxes, yet again, causing a mess. So keep the perches higher than the nesting boxes and not directly in front or over of the nesting boxes.
I use pine shavings as bedding for the chickens as well as for their nesting boxes. As you can see from the picture, the girls will sometimes throw shavings on their backs when laying an egg. I guess it's instinct to help conceal them from predators.
Even though one chicken takes up pretty much the whole nesting box, I have seen two chickens in a nesting box at the same time while the other 2 nesting boxes were empty. It doesn't look comfortable when two are in there, but when their favorite nest is taken, they are willing to share.
In the picture above, you'll see one of the roosting perches to the left of the door. There's a longer one to the right along the far wall that you can barely see in the picture. The chickens prefer the shorter roosting perch and, even though it's not very long, 5-6 of them will sleep on it.
The chicken door opening is 12 inches wide. I can't remember the height of it, but the actual door, it blocks part of the opening and leaves it at roughly 12 inches high. The door is placed inside a casing of sorts to allow it to slide open and closed. A board is attached to the beams above the door to work as a "door stopper". There is a paracord string attached to the top of the chicken door. The string goes through a series of eye-hooks along one of the ceiling beams to the back of the coop then between the top of the wall and the roof and ends on the outside of the back wall behind the human door where there's a hook to attach it to. This allows me to open and close the door from outside the coop in case I need to shut the chickens in or if I need to catch a chicken. I do wish the string was attached to the side of the coop instead of the back. That would allow me to make sure none of the chickens were under the door when I close it. As it is now, I have to have another person to help me when I close the door to make sure I don't close it on a chicken.
The human door is extra wide to make it easier to clean the coop. The outside of the door was painted in a chocolate brown, oil-based paint to keep water from damaging it. There's also a lot of overhang from the roof on the back of the coop so I can stand under it to check on the chickens and fill their feeder and drinker in the rain without getting wet. The outside of the chicken door was painted with the same paint.
Cleaning the coop is not something I was looking forward to, so I wanted to make it as easy and painless as possible starting with the design of the coop. The coop floor was painted with the same chocolate brown, oil-based paint that as the doors so it wouldn't flake off and would add some water-resistance to the coop floor. This made it a breeze to scrap droppings without damaging the floor.
Where the floor meets the door is flat. There's no door casing on the floor. This allows me to push a wheel barrow or wagon to the back door and pull the shavings out the back door with a hoe or rake. Then I can go inside, sweep the shavings straight out the back door. All I have to do then is replace the shavings and I'm done. The only downside to this part is that shavings will come out the back door when you open it and sometimes they get clumped up around the door and where the door hinges are and that keeps the door from shutting properly. I, then have to move the shavings out of the way so I can shut and lock the door. It's a minor inconvenience. I highly recommend this part of the design if you're building a small coop like this one.
The feeder and drinker aren't hung yet, but they will be. The chickens love to dust bathe in the shavings and, for some reason, the spot right behind their feeder and drinker is where they most enjoy dust bathing so they end up getting shavings in their water and food. Hanging them will decrease the mess they make.
My husband built a ramp for the chickens to enter the coop. The ramp has cross bars attached to help them get a grip on the wood. He nailed the cross bars on. I highly recommend screwing them instead of nailing them. Some of the cross bars have popped off of our ramp. I've replaced some of them and still others have popped off and need replacing now.
He built the run and added wire all the way around it. Predators aren't a huge problem so chicken wire sufficed for the job. The wire goes underground around all the sides of the coop and run and it also goes across the top of the run as well to keep any aerial predators out.
He then concreted about a foot out from the front, back, and sides of the run. The concrete is to keep digging predators out (mostly our dogs). This part backfired, as you can see from the above picture. When we've had a lot of rain, we get this massive mud puddle in the run and it takes forever for it to dry out completely. In the spring, we'll be working on a drainage system for this coop. This one corner is where all the water goes so this will be our focal point of the drainage system.
The wood box you see on the left-hand side of the above picture is a grazing box. This is where we grow grass for the chickens to eat. The chickens are able to peck the grass inside the box without killing the grass. Once the grass grows too high inside the box, the box is moved to another location inside the run and more seed planted inside it. The chickens then eat the grass from the area where the box was moved while new grass is growing in the box in it's new location inside the run. These have been a huge success and the chickens love them so we will definitely be adding more of these in the spring.
The door to the run is also custom built. There is a latch on the outside to close it and we use a carabiner hook as a makeshift lock. There is a paracord string attached to the top of the latch and it is run to the inside of the run to open the door from the inside.
Here you can see how some of the cross bars on the ramp have popped off. Again, screw them instead of nailing them.
It has been almost a year now since this coop was built and the chickens moved in. All in all, I would consider it to be a huge success.
I think we spent somewhere around $400 on this coop and run, maybe a little more. It was about the same amount of money that we would have spent on a pre-manufactured, store-bought chicken coop, but this one is build to last for a long, long time and it is much more roomy for our chickens. The chickens are very happy with their home and are laying lots of delicious, healthy eggs for us.
With the few repairs and upgrades that we will be doing in the spring, this coop will be perfect! I couldn't be more happy with it.
Later, I'll post a tour of the second coop that my husband built. It is a much larger coop and will accommodate 30-40 chickens. I'll copy the link for that post here when I get it done.
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