Those of us who hatch often have spare boys who need to be gotten out of the main flock because they're bothering the hens and annoying the Flockmaster rooster, I thought this quick-and-dirty build could be useful to others.
Important Note: This is a medium-security holding facility for low-value cull birds who are waiting for their turn to go to freezer camp. It's not suitable for birds that you'd be devastated to lose unless you put it inside a secure fence, nor is it suited for winter housing anywhere that gets any significant amount of snow. It's a primitive summer camp for the spare boys.
That said, with a 10x10 footprint and open air design, it's got plenty of room -- 100 square feet for at least 10 birds. It could, in theory, hold 25 birds if they also had a run or were allowed to free range.
I started with the frame of a picnic pavilion that had lost it's cover to age, UV degradation, and a hailstorm, staking it down as normal.
Then I setup the doors, using two panels from a homemade puppy playpen I'd bought at the Habitat ReStore a few years ago for less than what the wire was worth. They're secured with zipties to 4-foot U-posts that we had on hand and close with small bungies at the top and at the bottom.
We bought 6-foot chicken wire in the 1" size specifically for this purpose. My son and I cut pieces to wrap around the sides and folded the excess over around the slanting legs -- securing it with either zipties or wire. Because this is not intended to be a high-security facility I did not wire the roof. The bottom of the chicken wire is secured to the ground with landscape staples. It's going to get some kind of wire skirt -- probably only a foot since I have some 1-foot hardware cloth scrap.
I did, however, wrap a layer of old 2x4 wire around the outside at the bottom because we had it available and it would help against dogs.
We bought a large tarp and had a piece of another tarp to provide a roof and two walls. The door wall faces north and thus gets the least summer sun. The other open wall is about 12-15 feet from the house so it's sheltered from strong storms. (Yes, we don't really mind hearing teenage cockerels learn to crow right outside our bedroom. We both grew up with freight trains nearby and commercial jets overhead so our perception of "noisy" is skewed).
We padded the posts that stuck up from the frame with bits of scrap foam to prolong the life of the tarp.
The coop furniture is quite simple, but gives the boys a few places to get away from each other and I do have two water sources and two feeders in there.
This took 2 mornings in blistering hot weather for a middle-aged woman and her teenage son and another 15 minutes with my DH and both my still-at-home sons getting the tarp up over the roof and holding it there while I fastened the zipties.
If you wanted to make a more secure setup you could use hardware cloth and extend the wire over the roof -- though I'd be getting concerned about weight, especially if you used a sturdier roofing material -- metal or polycarbonate -- instead of the tarp. At that point, copy the general design in structural lumber. Or, at least, buy a higher-end picnic pavilion than this Wal-Mart, $89 late-season special.
Update: Jan 5 2023
Between summer's UV intensity, a couple tropical storms, and the strong storm associated with the recent arctic blast the tarps were in pretty bad shape. Additionally, I needed to add a little more shelter in order to have birds in here during the winter, so I've done some patching.
I really need to come up with some sturdier tarp and a better way of keeping the corners on the frame from wearing holes in said tarps, but this will do for the current batch of teenage cockerels who are disrupting life in the coop.
