Building the Run

Thumb, toe, and pride having sufficiently healed, the "run" was built in late May /early June.

A few 4x4 posts were sunk in concrete to form the south (front) wall. They were capped with a spanning 4x4, on top of which some long 2x4 rafters were laid across to the rafters of the coop roof.

Our spec called for serious anti-predation measures, so the top, bottom, and sides are all covered with "hardware cloth" -- essentially a more highly evolved form of chicken wire which uses something like 10 gauge wire to for 1/2" meshing.

View of east side:

View of west side:
(Note custom Straw Bale Holding Bin in background at right.)

Architectural detail of uprights, spanning beam, rafters, and meshing:
(Yes, still a lot of trim and finish work to do on the mesh.)

Detail of door and latch to the run:

Distance view of east side - this is what the neighbors see:

Distance view of above - this is what we see from the living room:

And as a final touch, one more anti-predation measure:


Still needs some days of trim work and painting, but it's fully functional and in production use at this point. And the gals will soon be old enough to start laying, so we'll also have to get to building the nesting box to go inside the coop.

Building the Coop

The coop was built over a period of several weeks, roughly March and April.

The foundation consists of concrete blocks supporting a couple 4x4's. Laid on top of those is a simple 2x4 framed floor system.


The four walls are also framed out with 2x4's. The floor and walls were built to exacting spec up in the garage and then carried down to the job site where they were "raised", a la barns of yore, by me and the kids. The flooring itself is just plywood.




Architectural details of note in the wall frames include openings for: a human-sized door and chicken-sized hatch (front / south), a medium sized window (side / east), a hatch for cleaning and sweeping stuff out (side / west), and a large area to accomodate a 4-wide nesting box. (The clean-out hatch can be seen in the above picture at Nathaniel's feet.)


The walls are just plywood nailed to the framing.


Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the construction process between the completion of the framing and the final painting. You can sort of see below, though, that I added a shingled roof (on top of some rafter 2x4s, at a suitably rakish angle), some reasonably nice-looking trim here and there, and a full door. The window hatch is screened, and all the hatches are hinged and latched.


The interior of the coop is just bare studs for now, plus a perching beam and hanging feeders. An extension cord is built in, so that I can "plug in" the coop (via extension cord to house) for powering the heat lamp in the winter and a sound system for approriately egg-inducing Muzak.

It was about at this stage I broke my thumb and toe, resulting in work being suspended for some weeks.

A warning

I can't say I wasn't warned:

'Oh, but isn't it just a simple chicken coop?' you might ask. Noooooooooo, my friends, never fool yourself into thinking the construction of a chicken coop is anything less than time consuming to the point of obsession...

At some point in the middle of the construction, you'll realize that you could have built a whole room onto your house for the amount of time and money spent. Forget about your children's college education -- unless, of course, they want to start selling eggs now to save up for college later...

She said it would be fun... that we could gather up some of the extra lumber we had lying about and nail it all together---that it would cost next to nothing. But after I used up the lumber I had, I still only had one wall completed. There was no turning back. We started hitting the lumber yard. Hard. It was like we couldn't stay away. I started dreaming about it at night...

A man walks into his dining room...

One day I came home to find flock baby chicks had taken up residence in the dining room.

Sure, they were cute and all. Fuzzy little cheeping things. What's not to like?

But I knew they would grow -- the kids were bound to start feeding these McNuggets, and then where would I be? Not eating in my dining room anymore, that's for sure.

No, no, she said.

You need to build us a Chicken Coop, she said.

A Chicken Coop?, I asked.

Sure, I replied.

I'm an engineer.

I own a chop saw.

Of course I can make a Chicken Coop.

I mean, how hard could it be?



It'd have to be a bit stylish, of course.

Something with plenty of room.

Something the neighbors wouldn't object to.

Ha, I said.

I'll get right on it, I said.


Couple of Saturdays, a bunch of two-by-fours, some old screening.

Ha, I said again.

I'll get right on it, I said.