My Chicken and Duck Coop Design

I love my chickens!  I tolerate my ducks.  Before I even start, I will start with a statement that my endearing husband said to me as we were working on my latest “grand idea.”  Why are we spending money on these stupid birds?  These are $1,000 eggs.  My short answer, because I love those stupid birds and they love me.  They know when they hear my, “Here chick, chick, chick” that they are in for a treat.  They run to the fence and crouch down just waiting for me to pet them.  Well, the chickens do.  The ducks just run for their lives like I am about ready to make them duck soup.  That is a subject for another post though.  

I will freely admit, they are spoiled.  Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about my latest project that I roped my husband into.  A few years ago I talked David into building me the cutest greenhouse out of old windows.  Part of my argument for this greenhouse was that I could share it with the chickens that I, unbeknownst to him, brought home from the farm store.  Well fast forward to where I learned a greenhouse is too hot in the summer time for birds that have a body temperature of 105F.  In marches the purpose of this post.  My latest and greatest idea, a new coop.

  After scouring the internet for the perfect chicken coop, I came to the conclusion that no coop is perfect.  There were parts of each coop I looked at that I liked.  The design of the coop that we built is not perfect for everyone but it does work well for us.  I still have things that I need to do to make it ready for winter and upgrades that I am planning for the future will probably drive my husband bonkers.  I will try to highlight key features that I included and why. 

1.  We chose a pole style building for two reasons.  The first is because it is common for us to receive high winds and little to block it where the building is at.  The second was the constant freeze thaw cycle of where we live would make things shift and move if we did not set poles at least 3 feet in the ground.
2. We put a roof over the entire area the birds live.  The location that the coop is built has no shade and we, aaahhhummmmm(throat clear) I, wanted them to have shade without having to be in a hot building during the summer time.  
3. We took chicken wire and wrapped it from the top of one side of the coop, under the floor, and up the other side of the coop.  Ideally I wanted to use something stronger than chicken wire but cue the large cost that we were not willing to spend.  I compromised and buried the wire, hoping that unknown wild animals will not dig and rip it apart.  My research told me that was a possibility but I had to tell myself it is better than what they had before and I had to be ok with that.  We have had our fair share of animals scoping out my feathered friends and I guess I will have to re-evaluate that decision if it happens again.
4. The building itself is an 8 X 10 where the end with the inside area is a 4 X 8 two story area for a total square footage of 112 sq ft.  I knew I did not want a large flock of birds but I also knew that I would be tempted if the space was large enough to house more feathered friends.  The birds can go inside and outside whenever they would like and this allows me to house my 10 birds with ample space.  I asked my husband to build the two story model because my chickens sometimes get tortured by my ducks.  My solution was to create a higher space where my chickens could escape from their roomates if they need to.  I think they spend more time on the tree branch I provided for them and the upstairs of their chicken condo than they do on the ground.  I guess they agreed with me on my decision to include this design feature.
5. We built a sliding door on one end of the enclosed side of the coop for easability of cleaning the inside floors.  If you didn’t know this, birds are notorious mess makers.  Cleaning the coop needs to be done regularly for several reasons (sounds like a great topic for a future article) and when I am doing that the last thing I want to do is have troubles getting to the space, hence the sliding door option.

 I hope you found this informative and it helped you to think about what is best for you and your circumstances.  Just remember, we learn through our mistakes.  Your first model may not work out the way you expected.  Learn and move on, just like I did.  Also, learn from my mistakes.  I already made them so you don’t have to!

Happy Bird Raising!

JameySue