Custom Coop

Aaron's co-worker asked him if he could build her a chicken coop that looked like a barn. He said that he could and we set to work on making her one. We had a lot of fun building this, but I will say that we got in over our heads. We had forgotten that even though chicken coops are small, they are not particularly easy to build. You have to put a lot of thought into the design if you want it to be optimum for both the birds and the humans.
He framed the basic barn shape, while I got to painting.


Next we added the supports for the roof, added a floor and the nest box area, and framed out the people door. You can see in the background the side walls are completed - painted, windows cut out and hardware cloth in place (the backside is showing here).


Here Aaron is working on the ramp to the roost area. We used 2 x 4s because we are in a cold climate, using a wider roost space allows the chickens to keep their toes warm with their bellies, as opposed to something like a broom handle, where the toes are wrapped around the roost and exposed to cold. We secured one of the roosts, but designed the other so that it could be removed depending on how many birds there are. On a cold night you don't want excess roost space, the low bird on the totem pole won't have the others to help keep her warm. So the other 2x4 fits between two piece of wood sticking up on one end, and the other end has a hole that slides onto a large bolt and can be screwed down with a nut. This project got, um, a little rushed toward the end, so I didn't get good pictures of the inside unfortunately.


The roost area now has walls, and the chicken door opens into a ramp. The ramp is on a hinge and can be latched if you wanted to close the roost area for any reason.


To the right of the chicken door he made a large door that can be taken completely out for cleaning. He also put the inside roost ladder on a hinge so that it folds up out of the way for cleaning. Building in these details was so much easier now that we actually have chickens! The door ramp folds down onto a fixed platform, which has another hinged ramp attached to it. This ramp hinges to make space for a person to stand inside.


This side has the nest box access, the door folds open to three nest boxes, which I painted black to add darkness for the hens, they prefer a dark area to lay their eggs. We purposely made this coop short, so that her little ones could collect the eggs. One of the bigger challenges with this coop was trying to find small enough windows. We went to several places looking for used windows and couldn't find any, so Aaron framed these pieces of plexiglass and made his own. We weather stripped them and added a latch for windy days.


Here is Lexi checking out the new coop, she impressed me with all of her chicken knowledge and had fun feeding my chickens. This side shows the people door and the chicken door. It's not painted, because did I mention this project got a little rushed? Aaron added a tin roof as per the recipient's request, and it looked great.


Here it is all loaded up ready to go. It has a cupola for ventilation and looks also, but it wouldn't have fit out of our garage with it on. We had a great time making this together, I can't wait to build more - especially our dream coop someday with room for lots more chickens!