Building our Chicken Coop

I wish I could tell you EXACTLY how we did this. We didn’t  use a plan. It was just built by eyeballing how big we wanted it. We had an idea of how it would work. We read so many chicken forums and websites. All the favorites and dislikes of their coops. Then knew how much space we wanted to use in our yard etc.  And went from there. I hope the photos can at least give you a glimpse of how it was put together. We even did an add on later you will see in this post.

We love our Chickens. A friend gave us their 5 Black Sex-Link Hens. They have been the best thing ever. They are so sweet. They love me (Mary Beth) the best. They give us between 4-5 eggs a day. It’s wonderful to have fresh eggs. We LOVE LOVE IT!!

My children love having them too.

Now.. on to the coop 🙂

Just a note- any wood that touches the ground is pressure treated wood. The rest of the wood that doesn’t touch the ground is regular pine wood .  We bought everything from Lowe’s Home Improvement store.  Lowe’s is our favorite go to place. They have the extra items there and so much easier to find what we are looking for 🙂 Not to mention really great prices and friendly people.

Starting the base of the coop.

Adding more on to the frame.

Front door for the chickens to come in and out of.

Big door for us to access the inside of their coop to clean it out and check on the hens.

Yes– Chad goofing off 🙂 What a ham!!

We moved the coop before it got too heavy to where we wanted it located in the yard. Then started to work on the chicken run.

Working on the frame of the run.

Framing in the door we would need to access inside for the food, cleaning etc. 🙂

Starting to put the roof on the top of the coop. 🙂

Working on the nesting boxes for the hens. We put them in the far back wall so we could then make another opening to lift and check for eggs. 🙂

Adding the wood for the roof

Adding shingles to the top of the coop

Adding the walls to the coop and cutting out the door and framing all that in as well.

Front view looking into the coop before we add in the front panel.

We added small-sized chicken wire to the inside ceiling of the coop. We wanted alot of ventilation but we wanted to keep out any predators wanting into the coop.

Cut out a window also in the door and added chicken wire.

Chicken ramp. We did end up adding more pieces to walk up the ramp. I didn’t get another photo of having more bars across the ramp. We realized we had them too stretched out.

Looking into the coop from the large door we made for ourselves. You can see the roosting bar.

Framing in the rest of the run and painting it 🙂

The back side you can see the access door to the nesting boxes to retrieve the eggs. We later put a handle there as well.

Since the larger holed chicken wire is more expensive. We put it at the bottom half of the run to keep any snakes or racoons or cats putting their paws in to swipe at our sweet hens. Then a larger mesh size at the top to keep out hawks etc.

On the inside of the coop, we simply put down some cheap peel and stick vinyl to help with clean up. Makes the coop look all fancy 😉 Lowe’s has very inexpensive vinyl for this. Simply used  pair of scissors to cut and lay down and they stuck great.

Lots of pine shavings added inside of the nesting boxes and the coop.

Our sweet hens. We can identify all 5 of them pretty easily. We have :  Lucky, Ginger, Ebony, Katie & Katniss.  (Katniss is at the top of the pecking order so it seems appropriate – for all our Hunger Game fans out there)

My daughter and hubby enjoying holding Katniss. Katniss didnt want to smile for the camera 🙂

The finished coop. All painted up and handles put on. The orange bucket is their water. There are little prong like things they peck at and water comes out. It keeps the water clean.

We then added a wider shelf into the run. The girls kept trying to jump up on that small beam to look around. So we added this a few days later. They enjoyed flying up to it to take a higher peek around the yard.

We then 2 weeks later decided we really wanted to give the hens even MORE room to roam and free range a bit. So we extended out onto the coop.

Adding in more wire.

Oh look a really big chicken!!!

The green stakes we got at Lowe’s Home Improvement too. They were easy to just nail into the ground and they were made to clip chicken wire right onto it. Adding this made it so easy!

At the base we decided to use some timber, yard timber wood then used a staple gun to staple in the wire just for extra support.

Better view from the inside.

Girls were VERY happy to be out in their new area to stretch out and run. You can tell when they are happy. They were so cute and running and hopping and enjoying new grass/leave and area to dig up for us 🙂

So there you have it. Sorry no real formal instructions. But shows you how we put it together. We got to try out paint color on the coop. We love it, so we ended up painting our shed the same colors and will be painting our home the same as well.

We enjoy having the chickens and all the wonderful eggs they produce for us.  Best thing we ever did. They are easy to care for and great entertainment!

**Lowe’s Home Improvement did not ask me to write this post– nor were we compensated for this post– all opinions and views are solely mine. We just love them and will keep building our dream home with them!**