All Cooped Up!

I will start this out by saying that I don't have a lot of experience building things.  My dad was a great woodworker and built all sorts of things, but other than the occasional birdhouse, I never built anything.   I take that back, I once built a fence from scratch, using only hand tools.  It didn't look bad and it did the job, but I kind of messed up the gate.  Oh well, it kept the dog in the backyard.

Last year, when I decided that I was going to take the plunge and get some chickens, I started looking at pre-built chicken coops on the interwebs.  Wow.  Talk about sticker shock!  Combined with the fact, that so many of them are made overseas out of press board and who really knows what's in that paint anyway?

The next stop was surfing the web maybe doing it myself.  I looked at lots of designs... I mean lots.  Days were filled with various websites and I even bought a book with really cool designs in them. That's when I discovered this site.  The Garden Coop has some slick, sophisticated designs and their plans, according to the reviews were very, very thorough and easy to follow - perfect for someone like me.

After some thought, I decided on the Basic Coop and purchased the plans.  My thought was to build a run onto it, so I played around with some graph paper and the basic design and came up with the idea of building the coop section with longer legs and extending a run of the same height off of it.

Did I mention that I've never used a circular saw before?  There were some parts of the cutting that made me nervous, like the plunge cuts, where you basically plunge the spinning blade into the middle of the board where you want a cut.

The Internet is full of helpful advice and I did a bit of research on safely using a circular saw, purchased some safety glasses and set about cutting all the wood to the sizes I figured out I needed. True to all the reviews, these plans are amazing!  Every step was laid out for me and it was really easy to follow along.  I'm sure experienced builders might find them a little too detailed and probably didn't have to refer to them like I did, but I sure appreciated them!

The coop and run are almost a year old and the inhabitants seem quite happy with it.  During the worst of the winter, I did wish that I had insulated it, as there were a few nights where I was worried about the little dears and ended up wrapping the coop with a thick blanket and closed off 2/3 of the top to keep it a bit warmer in there.  You have to be careful about closing things up so tightly that no air gets in, because that's how frostbite happens - the moisture from their breathing builds up and then ice crystals form.  The girls made it through just fine though.  My only issue was the drinking water freezing solid.

Hello??  We're waiting for our mealworms here.  Hurry up lady!

I'm really happy with my efforts and it is hen approved.  I mean, it's not perfect and a few times, I had to let go of my perfectionist tendencies, but considering that I never built anything remotely similar to this, I'm pretty proud of myself!  It looks nice in the yard, too.

All in all, it did turn out to be more money than if I had bought a ready made cheapo coop like they sell on Amazon, but this is sturdy and I think it is going to last a long time.  The girls are safe and secure and since we do have raccoon and opossum (and fox) in the area, that was important to me. The total cost to build this from all new materials (wood, hardware, screws, tools, etc.) was around $500.