Chicken coop

[Alain Hermans]

Hi,

I'm looking for a plan to make a simple chicken coop... Does anyone have this ?

Ahe.

[Doug Miller]

Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Bigpole]

Try the Monroe Borthers in Hooterville.

[Paul Kierstead]

length for anything. Turns out my proposed initial snarky answer was unjustified. Well, ok, one has to wonder why ask here, but I am guessing any alt.* group that involves chickens might not be the best place to ask for plans.

PK

[Jim]

I've built a few different ones over the years in existing locations, so never had a chance to start from scratch. A lot depends on how big of birds you have & how many. Don't skimp when it comes to putting wire around. Making a wood structure encased in 3/4" hardware cloth is idea. That's tough enough to stand up to a racoon if you've got good wood over it & small enough to keep mice & snakes out, too.

You should put a piece of plywood that slopes down to you from the wall under the perches. We mostly had Bantams or Game chickens, so we could fit 3 perches staggered down in a slope with about 8" between them, stepped a few inches up as they got to the back. Keep the back one at least 6" off the wall for those birds. You'll have to change for other sized birds, of course.

Depending on how deep, you probably want to keep the perches a good foot above the plywood so you can reach up there with a trowel & scrape the crap off into a bucket. Doesn't want to be a huge slope, an inch or two per foot is plenty. If you overhang it by 6", other birds can use nesting boxes underneath.

Make nexting boxes modular & easily moved. You'll want to pull them once or twice a year & clean up behind them. A galvanized metal trash can is one of the best holders for feed made, IMO. You should have windows that can be closed fully for cold weather & opened fully for the summer. I prefer a top hinged, short window if I can. that keeps out the worst of the rain, but still lets plenty of breeze in. I live in Maryland, so that's the weather I'm writing for. YMMV

You don't need much height. Don't go making 8' ceilings if you're only

6' tall. Make the ceiling 6'6" or a bit less. Chickens like something more enclosed for the night & if you want to catch one for eating or whatever, they'll just hurt themselves flying around. You want to be able to corner them easily & that means grabbing them in the top rear corner of the perch area - so don't make that terribly deep either, if you can help it.

I think the best one we ever had was built out of an old corn crib - the long narrow kind that sit at the bottom end of a barn. We had just one roost & a 1' strip of plywood (no slope when that narrow) to catch the crap down one wall with nest boxes underneath. It already was wired well. All I had to do was put up a lower ceiling. The chickens didn't like being strung out that much, though. They prefered to cluster more & I wound up putting a tiered perch at one end. We left the one on the side & some used it.

Jim