Chicken Coop 101
June 26th, 2013 · 6 Comments · Posted in Blog, farming
Ordinary framing lumber for the base of the coop
For months–even before moving to our farm property–I agonized over the design of a mobile chicken coop, reading everything about coops I could lay my hands on, watching endless videos on Youtube about coop construction. I never found anything that precisely described what I was looking for–a compact, lightweight home for our chickens that we could move from one pasture location to another. Most coops are designed to be stationary.
The design I describe here is my own, inspired by the work of others but fitted to my rudimentary carpentry skills. The biggest engineering hurdle was how to put functioning wheels on the coop. I’ve seen many designs that just didn’t look very practical to me: wheels no bigger than what you’d find on a lawn mower, for instance, mounted with simple bolts drilled through two-by-fours. That didn’t look very permanent to me, or the kind of thing that would stand up to being driven over 20 acres of bumpy pastures.
As you can see in this photo, I started with a base of untreated two-by-six-inch lumber nailed together to form a base four feet wide and eight feet long, supported with metal corner braces, then covered with wire mesh. I’d read that a wire floor is hard on chickens’ feet. But I wanted a floor the poop might fall through to reduce the need for cleaning, as well as providing more ventilation. This is a coop intended for chickens to sleep in and lay eggs in. They’re supposed to spend most of their time foraging outdoors.
Plywood screwed to base form walls of coop
The frame of the coop walls is minimal. I used sheets of 5/8-inch, exterior-grade plywood as structural members. They’re attached to the base with coated screws. Lengths of two-by-four framing lumber are fastened at the corners to attach the plywood sides to the ends, eventually forming a box four feet tall. The space inside the coop is 32 feet square. That’s slightly more than one square foot of floor space for our 30 Rhode Island Red chickens. But they will have plenty of room above the floor to roost. In fact, each chicken has potentially four cubic feet of space to roam around in while she is in the coop, as long as she utilizes the several two-by-three-inch roosting members that will span the coop from side to side at different levels.
Cutting hole for nest boxes with circular saw
My biggest concern–how to put wheels on the coop–was solved by a visit to a welder down the road from our farm who just happens to specialize in building trailers. I described what I was trying to do. He drove to the farm, took some measurements, and built a most excellent three-point trailer chassis using some old tires and an axle he had laying around. The trailer has a standard ball hitch and a screw type jack post for leveling. I couldn’t have asked for more. He dropped it off one day and I struggled a bit getting my unfinished box of a coop mounted on it–or should I saw mostly mounted.
Meanwhile, I had begun construction of two sets of nesting boxes in the basement. These also were made primarily of plywood–glued and screwed together to make four boxes 12 inches by 12 inches, or one foot square, for each side of the coop. Most of what I’d read about chicken coop design suggested that a nest this size would be adequate for a large chicken, and that four chickens could share a box. Thus, eight boxes should suffice for our 30 chickens (assuming they all survive to the egg laying stage).
My brother-in-law Steve flew in from Chicago to help on the farm and I put him to work finishing the coop. Together we were able to finish mounting the coop onto the chassis and bolt it permanently in place. Next we used a mini circular saw to cut holes in the sides of the coop for the nesting boxes. These were attached to pieces of two-by-four screwed to the plywood walls as anchors.
Inserting nesting boxes into side of coop
Here you can see me holding a set of four nesting boxes inserted into the side of the coop while Steve crawls inside and screws them securely into the anchors that frame the edges of the opening. The nesting boxes are open at the top for collecting eggs from outside the coop. The chickens enter from another opening inside the coop. The inside opening is faced with a two-inch strip of plywood along the bottom to hold the nesting material–most likely straw–inside the box.
After mounting the nesting boxes, we used our mini circular saw to cut out large pieces for doors at either end of the coop. Steve wisely suggested that one door should be big enough for a person to enter the coop for cleaning. At the other end, we covered the opening with wire mesh on the inside to provide ventilation. The plywood pieces we cut out of the walls became the doors.
Hinges and latches complete the picture
We made a couple of trips to the hardware store to find all of the hinges and latches we needed to complete the coop. As you can see here, we fashioned lids for the nesting boxes from a heavier piece of exterior grade 3/4-inch plywood. I wanted to make sure that the lids did not suffer any warpage and were heavy enough to close tightly. We used strap hinges on the lids and on the doors at either end of the coop. We applied eyes and hooks to lock the lids closed, as well as to hold the lids open while collecting eggs. The doors on the ends lock with simple sliding latches.
Like those wheels?
Mounting the metal roof on the coop
Finally, we were ready to put a roof on our coop. For this I had ordered lightweight metal roofing from the local feed store. It came in a 14-foot length. We cut this into three sections, sized to overhand the edge of the coop by three inches on all four sides. Steve went around the coop on a ladder, drilling holes and fastening the roof in place with special roofing screws that come with rubber washers.
You may be wondering why I chose a flat roof for our coop. Well, that speaks to my crude carpentry skills. I wanted to avoid all those angles that a pitched roof would require. As I told my wife, there isn’t hardly a level spot on our hillside farm anyway. No matter where we park it, the roof will be at least slightly out of level, or enough for water to run off. If we get a heavy snow, I’ll just sweep the snow off the roof with a broom.
In this photo, you also get a good view of the ball hitch and the jack our welder attached to the trailer.
Chicks have room to roam in their new coop
When the coop was finished, we moved the chicks from their enclosure in the basement. Since they’ve grown up on a bed of hay, I placed hay over the wire mesh floor. I’ll keep the chicks in there for a few more days so they get used to the idea of this being their permanent home. Then we’ll hitch the coop to the pickup truck and tow it out to the orchard where they can start work mowing the grass, debugging our pastures and laying down some fertilizer.
I think they’ll like it.
Way Cool Ed!
Thanks, Suzy!
Great coop! I sent this on to my husband. We are rebuilding/repairing a coop given to us (bad idea – we should have started from scratch like you did). Our chicks are now free-ranging while waiting for their coop to be finished. They started life in the ‘cardboard castle’ in our garage. Even though I was vigilant about keeping the door closed from the garage to the house, there is still more dust than I can imagine in the house (and the garage). My husband just changed the filter on our furnace and was astounded !!! at what it had filtered out (way more than typical changes). Just an fyi – he is smarter than I am on things like this, so just double check your filter, too, since your chicks have been raised in your basement.
Good luck with your new coop, Diana. All I can say is, four hands are better than two if you are trying to mount a coop on a mobile chassis. We had not problem with dust in the furnace filter because we don’t have central heating!
At least not yet.
Friday Favorites | // Jun 29, 2013 at 2:37 pm
[…] 1. Simple Homeschool shares how to forage for wild edibles with kids. 2. The Slow Cook shows us how to build a chicken coop. 3. Rachel Held Evans shares Hannah Ettinger’s story from her life in Sovereign Grace […]
| Friday Favorites // Jul 7, 2013 at 9:29 am
[…] Homeschool shares how to forage for wild edibles with kids. 2. The Slow Cook shows us how to build a chicken coop. 3. Rachel Held Evans shares Hannah Ettinger’s story from her life in Sovereign Grace […]