Pollywogs!

So, the hard part of raising chickens, the expensive part, is definitely the coop…at least for me, building The Garden Coop from scratch:  I got my plans at http://thegardencoop.com/ because they were fairly detailed and exhaustive.   I’ve been working on it reasonably regularly for the past two weeks and she still isn’t quite done…

The most important part of the plans, in my opinion, is the very good material list at the beginning.  I was able to buy nearly everything locally and all at once, very appreciated!  I did have a couple problems here and there where the instructions weren’t explicit, but I usually shrugged and said to myself “it’s a chicken coop!”.

A few notes:

The egg door is fairly unexplained but straight-forward.  A protip tho:  the thickness of your backing plywood should be the same as the vertical supports the door stops are secured to.  I had to shim things a bit to make it close nicely since I wasn’t paying attention to my thicknesses.

The right coop wall, the one with the human access door, I couldn’t figure out how to make things work in a straight line, so you may notice my walls sloping in towards the door.  “It’s just a chicken coop” ahah.  It works because the vertical supports (the door stops) allow the side walls to slope while the door itself is nice and square to the rest of the coop.  Just looks a little funny up close.

The author of the plans used the wooden SunTuf closure strips, which are being discontinued.  The plastic ones require at least a 2″ screw to hold the panels in place.  I used 1″ ring nails to hold the closure strips down, and then put a self drilling, neoprene-washered hex head 2″ screw in every other ridge, doubled up at the edges.  So, that would modify the parts list.

The author lists 1″ self-drilling hex head screws to hold the siding in place, 1″ would barely go through the old tongue & groove wood that I used as siding much less the siding AND the plywood, so when you go to buy screws, keep in mind the 1″ self-drilling need to be whatever you’d use for your siding!  I used 1 3/4″ I believe.  A lot of them!

The old tongue and groove wood that I used was red oak and hickory.  I ignored the tongue and groove, occasionally sawing the tongue off where it caused too much of a problem.  Without very tight clean edges, the coop isn’t going to look very “sharp”, so if you recycle old siding, if you care about such things make sure you’re able to overlap things in a tidy fashion.  I didn’t really care because “it’s just a chicken coop” ;)

The wood treatment I used is the same he has listed in the plans, and I probably only used about half of the gallon.  Expensive and then rapacious shipping on top of that, but when it rains hard the wood DOES get wet and this thing damn well better last 40 years…also, I used ultra high molecular weight polyethylene instead of galvanized metal to separate the concrete blocks from the wood since we had some sitting around.  Should allow the wood to warm up on cold winter days and help drive off moisture!

I didn’t put any windows or vents in, as with the open top there is no way it’s gonna get stuffy in there with a chicken access door open low on the coop.  I guess windows into the coop would be a nice vanity, but I felt it should be a very quiet and secure place for the chickens, as hopefully they’ll only be using it to lay eggs and retreat to in the worst weather.

The author recommends having insulation between the inner and outer walls depending upon season, removing them during the summer.  I’m going to put up foil/bubble/foil insulation, and leave it up year round.  It’ll reflect out the heat in the summer and hopefully reflect back heat in the winter.  Apparently over 95′F, chickens can start to have serious problems, a situation the author probably never has to deal with in the northwest.  I’ll also put a sheet of that over top in the hottest days of the summer to keep the sun’s rays out, and the coldest days of the winter to help keep warm air in…which leads to the next point…

The author has the chicken access into the coop being placed in the floor.  Combined with the wide open roof, this makes the coop a chimney, which is going to be impossible to keep warm in the winter time.  It is very good for fresh air the rest of the year, however, which is very important for good chicken health.  I haven’t finished wrapping my head around this one, but either I’m going to put a simple door on the bottom access, or bring the chickens in the side (the side with the human access door) and be able to close them up when it’s very cold out.

And now pictures!  Only got one or two left to add:  the finished coop with wire and the door, and one with the cheeps happily scratching around inside :)