Hello all, it’s been a little while. The weather is finally getting nice enough where I can stand to be in the garage. I’m putting the upgrade kit together now and wondering if anyone had any input on a chicken coop?
I’ve got to make one and was curious if anyone has one and had ideas that should or would make it easier for picking eggs, hen comfort, and cleaning.
Here are a few in-progress pics of the coop I built last fall. I don’t have pics of the 100% finished product but this should give you an idea.
It’s 8x8 feet total, but with a divider in the middle so it’s basically 2 4’x8’ coops.
The “indoor” space is about 2 ft wide, so each side has about 8 square feet of indoor space. It has full-width openings along the back for easy cleaning, and smaller openings on the sides for egg collection.
The “outdoor” space is accessed through 2 full-width doors on the front.
I’ve added a few electrical boxes to plug in lamps & heaters during the winter. They all feed to a single plug so I only have to run one extension cord to the coop.
This is the second version of a coop I built ~10 years ago that my wife liked a lot, so I made a few upgrades to make the build process easier & cheaper, as well as some other quality-of-life improvements (like the wheels).
Hard to say the total cost, as it was mostly built from leftovers I had laying around. Only the roof, wire mesh and various bits of hardware were specifically bought for this project.
No CNC involved here, though…
Never had chickens.
I would make chicken shaped cutouts for windows. Or the whole thing in the shape of a giant chicken.
