It all started by ripping off a coop I liked then changing the design around a little. Why not just buy a coop? The answer is I'm part masochist and part penny-pincher. Buying a new coop online, which I would have to construct from a kit anyway, would have cost me about $2700! Mine cost a fraction of that, though I still haven't tallied the total bill. I figure it's cost me under $500, which was way more than I expected, but at least not the price of a dune buggy.
Here's the design from Google Sketchup, which I used to design the coop and make blueprints for it:
The first pic there shows it in different stages of construction. Here's what the final was supposed to look like, though I changed where the run went and decided on white instead of natural wood:
And here are different stages of construction. I realized early on that the design I ripped off had a flimsy base and that I needed to sure up the base if the rest of the coop was going to last long:
I can also walk on the base without so much as a creak, but someone had to take the picture . . .
And in case you thought I was kidding about the knuckle busting:
Kristen thought I was going to swear after the hammer glanced off a nail and split my finger some. I super-glued in but split it open again the next day doing the same thing. No one was around to hear me that time, and no, I still didn't swear, and even if I did you couldn't prove it.
This is a feeder I made based off a design I liked that I found online somewhere. Simple and cheap to make:
The chickens enter the coop from underneath via this drawbridge (drawramp?) I came up with:
You pull the rope from the outside to raise it and they can be completely enclosed at night.
With the fencing that even runs under the dirt and being able to "batten down the hatches" at night we're hoping no coyotes or other predators will be able to get in. Now if we could just make it scorpion proof . . .
And the final product:
