Take the video tour here or read on for the full story...
The Prequel - This is the story of the Little Coop That Grew. Once upon a time, there was a girl and a boy who decided they wanted a couple of chooks (that’s Australian for “chickens”). They were trying to live a contented, organic life on their 25 acres of a rocky hillside, together with a large cottage garden, a modest veggie patch, and a flourishing orchard. Unfortunately, the fruit flies also wanted a contented, organic life in the flourishing orchard to the extent that the frustrated owners were becoming less and less organic and more and more violently chemical in their warfare on the fruit flies.
They read that chooks were a handy (and organic) weapon in this fight, as they scratch and dig the ground and consume the over-wintering fruit fly larvae. Plus they fertilize as they insecticide. And then there’s eggs – the icing on the cake. Well, actually the eggs would be in the cake, rather than on the cake, but you get the drift…
“Right, let’s buy some chickens,” said the boy. “No,” said the girl (rolling her eyes), “first we need to have a place for them to live in”. So the boy, who worked at the local Hammer Barn (hardware chain store in Australia – not its real name), bought something that had been discounted and brought it home:
"We can’t put chooks in This Thing,” said the girl, rolling her eyes (she’s always doing that, so we won’t bother mentioning it anymore, you can mentally add it in as the occasion arises). “First winter rain they’ll get soaked, then they’ll freeze and die. There’s no roost, and it’s barely wide enough for 2 chooks to pass each other to get to the slippery metal ladder to climb up to perch on that uncomfortable metal shelf. You have to do better than that.”
So the boy went searching on the internet. One evening he announced “I’ve found the perfect chook house. It’s big enough for 6 chooks, it’s got an egg box at the back for easy collection, a drop-down front, and a drawer under the roost area that you can slide out to clean. And most importantly for you, my love - it’s cute. There’s even a video – we can see what it looks like in real life”.
And sure enough, there was a video with a lovely young lady demonstrating the features of this remarkable coop, together with 3 happy chickens strolling around the not-spacious-but-OK-if-they’ll-have-a-bigger-daytime-yard, run. It didn’t really look as if 6 chickens would be so happy in the space, but the 3 chickens fitted in nicely enough, and they would have a much bigger yard outside of the run for their daytime enjoyment, and the boy and girl only wanted 2 or maybe 3 chickens anyway, so they clicked on the PayPal button and a week later an exciting large box was delivered. SPOILER ALERT (and you probably already guessed this): The 3 chickens must have been bantams. Pullet bantams. Miniature pullet bantams. Genetically engineered tiny creatures that looked exactly like real grown-up hens, but were about an eighth of the size. Probably the young lady was too. And I won’t tell you how much they paid because you’re already laughing hard enough at them by now.
So the boy and the girl put their cute new coop together. And stood back and looked at it, and looked at each other. “Maybe we water it and it grows?” said the girl. “It’s so much smaller than it looked on the screen,” said the boy. “We’ve got cardboard boxes that are thicker than those timber walls,” said the girl. “That pull-out poop drawer isn’t deep enough to hold sparrow farts,” said the boy, “and those 2 sticks sitting an inch above the floor should be called squatting bars, not roosting bars.”
“You could maybe squeeze 2 full-size chickens in That Thing,” said the girl, “but the minute one of them farts, they’ll be gassed to death.” And of course, by this time (a whole week has passed since they ordered the coop) the boy and girl had decided they needed 4 chickens, not 3, so the housing situation was even direr.
“I have a Great Idea,” said the boy “we’ll build a proper coop, from scratch.” And the girl rolled her eyes (yes, yes, I know what I said back there, but this is a serious eye-rolling situation - because the boy and the girl had been together for quite some time and she knew how this worked. The boy was always having Great Ideas, which are still Working Themselves Out in his head, or waiting for The Right Time or are currently Useful Bits and Pieces stacked in a corner of the garage). The girl knew it could be 3 (or 30) years before she got a chicken coop.
But because they were living in the time of the Great Covid Lockdown, there was nothing else to do with their weekends. And because the boy worked at the Hammer Barn, he could get staff discounts on stuff and bargain prices on damaged stuff and even free stuff that was too damaged to sell (which is why I can’t use Hammer Barn’s real name, because the managers aren’t supposed to give staff the too damaged stuff, they are supposed to throw it away, but that’s very environmentally unfriendly and just plain wasteful).
So this is the story of how their chicken coop actually happened...
The Plan - They watched lots of YouTube videos about DIY chicken coops. The girl watched the videos by people who built coops from recycled materials and re-purposed old sheds, and dog kennels and pallets – she thought they were cool and thoughtful, and suited to the times. The boy watched videos by Carolina Coops that were grand and beautiful and with perfect carpentry – he thought they would inspire awe and envy in other people. The girl drew plans. The boy critiqued the plans and suggested changes. The girl drew more plans and more plans until the boy was satisfied they had designed the perfect chicken coop. The boy looked at the plans once more, said “Uh-huh” and went to work. The girl asked him – “do you want to check some of these dimensions again?” and the boy said “Got it all up here”, tapping his head.
These are the plans. The results were mostly as designed, with a tweak or five:
Footings - First there was some leveling because they lived on the side of a hill, and anyway, the boy had a tractor and he took every opportunity to play with it. The girl moved rocks and raked and got the ground nice and level to set some paving stones down for the footings, just like the Carolina Coops videos advised.
“Nope,” said the boy “Gotta have concrete footings here, termites can come up between the pavers and we wouldn’t see them. And there has to be a concrete floor in the shed. And anyway I got the cement for free because they dropped a pallet at work and some of the bags split”. So the girl dug trenches and moved more rocks and the boy made forms and staked and leveled and checked right angles and the cement mixer nearly fell on him because he had it set up on the slope of the hill, but by the end of the weekend they had some spiffy concrete footings, which looked like this:
Frame and Walls - The timber base plate is pressure-treated timber to protect against rot and hopefully termites, but the rest of the frame comes from pallets that were discarded by Hammer Barn, and which the girl pulled apart and removed all the nails from.
The walls are Formply which is used mainly to create forms for concreting and is hardier and more waterproof than marine ply. And it’s already got a coating on it, so it doesn’t need to be painted, as long as you’re happy to have black walls, and if you’re not happy to have black walls, well too bad, because the coating can’t be painted.
The henhouse is 1.2 x 2.4 meters (4 x 8 foot) floor space, because that is the size of a sheet of Formply, and although that is bigger than necessary for 4 or maybe 5 chickens, the boy couldn’t be bothered to cut it up more than necessary, and besides, it was a standard Carolina Coops size, so it must be right!
This is how much they’d done by the 2nd weekend:
Originally the rafters were put up in an un-notched state because the girl said it was a waste of time and effort for a chicken coop, but when she got back from work the next day, the boy had taken them all down, notched them, and put them back up, because “Carolina Coops Man wouldn’t take shortcuts”.
And by the 3rd weekend a lot of painting had taken place (that was the girl’s job):
The henhouse floor is about 70 cm (27”) off the ground – just a bit higher than a wheelbarrow, to make it easy to clean out, and the walls are 1.2m (4 foot) high, another full sheet of Formply. So the henhouse proper is made from 4 sheets of Formply. Another 5 sheets were needed for the shed and the nesting box.
By the end of the 4th weekend the roof was on and the hardware cloth attached:
Tip: For corrugated metal roofing, use one sheet for the full length of both sides. Cut along the halfway mark, but just through the top half of the corrugations. Slide the sheet up the slope of the roof, and as it reaches the halfway mark, the weight of the metal will cause the sheet to bend in the middle and drop down to the other side. This is safer, as the sheets can’t slide off the roof before you fix them, and gives additional strength to the roof.
By the 5th weekend, the shed was fully clad, the nesting box almost done and the access doors to the henhouse completed:
The 6th weekend was entirely devoted to the construction of the “coop-ola”, inspired by this post on BYC. It's not in the plans above, as the boy made it up as he went along. The girl bought the boy a fancy copper weathervane to go on the top of the coop-ola because if you’re gonna do it in style, you have to go all out!
The shed - The shed door is a piece of Formply, timber-framed for strength. On the north side (LHS below), a window scavenged (pre-Covid) from a kerbside cleanup pile and turned side on to make an awning window, still needs some hardware cloth so that it can be opened in summer to let cross breezes cool the henhouse. Large doors on the wall between the shed and henhouse (RHS) are mostly hardware cloth providing permanent ventilation into the shed, and easy access to throw clean bedding from the shed into the house.
There’s another smaller hardware cloth window on the east wall, looking into the run. It can be opened to access a tube for dispensing oyster shells or to throw out a handful of scratch grains. Lower down, there’s a nifty little door that provides access to the feeder. Its triangular prism shape creates a slope sitting on the feeder lid that prevents chookies from jumping up on the feeder and leaving their poopy presents behind.
Shelves, hooks and feed storage containers still need to be added. But most importantly, the chooks get a lovely view from their bedroom, looking down the hill.
Ventilation - The boy and girl were very mindful of ventilation. The boy’s hero, the Carolina Coops Man, insisted in every video that “you can never have enough (sic) ventilation”. And the girl had discovered a fantastic forum called Backyard Chickens, which had its own mantra - “one square foot of permanent ventilation per chicken”. Seeing as how they were planning on 5 or maybe 6 chickens, they made sure to calculate enough hardware cloth covered areas, above chicken roosting height – the gables, the eaves, into the shed so the shed ventilation could contribute, and just to be on the safe side, the boy made a cupola.
Extra ventilation for summer is provided by the large access doors that have awning inserts, and the shed window that will also open like an awning, channeling north-south breezes that are the most common in this location. In case that proves insufficient for 6 or maybe 7 chickens, there are further opportunities to create additional windows above the nest box and pop door on the west and east sides of the henhouse.
The Run - The run is a basic framed construction the width of the henhouse/shed – 2.4 meters - and about 4 meters long. The hardware cloth is stapled on, but then covering boards were screwed on at every beam, so no rampaging critter could tear through. All along the eaves strips of hardware cloth are stapled on so that there is no possible entry point for rodents (unless they are baby rodents, and surely the chooks will deal with those!).
The girl was horrified at the cost when the boy proposed an automatic door, but being both a financial genius and a fan of sleep-ins, she calculated the cost of this luxury at 30 cents per day, worst-case scenario, and promptly ordered it. It’s made by ChickenGuard, provides access from the run to the daytime yard, and is set via light levels. In case the chookies are super early risers, they can access their run for early morning exercise before the door opens.
Features - By the end of the 7th weekend, the boy and girl had completed all the fiddly bits and the coop was ready for residents:
Comfy straw in the nest boxes.
The boy wanted hemp bedding (because the Carolina Coops Man), but couldn’t get it, so settled on organic sugar cane mulch instead. They use a lot of sugar cane mulch on the large cottage garden, modest veggie patch, and flourishing orchard, so by cycling it through the henhouse first, it will be virtually free, plus added fertilizer!
There are supports for two 8-foot roosts (3 x 2s, rounded edges), but since the boy and girl aren’t planning on more than 7 or maybe 8 chickens, they only have one up. It’s started out dark grey but has now been painted white to make it easier to see.
The Feedomatic treadle feeder and homemade oyster shell dispenser can be filled from inside the shed. There is plenty of natural grit in the compost in the run, and even more in the soil outside in the yard, so at this point, there’s no special dispenser for that.
A food-grade barrel catches water from the roof and dispenses it via horizontal poultry nipples both inside and outside the run. The pipes have been insulated against the heat.
What we’d do differently
- Build a bigger henhouse, because Chicken Math is real! The initial idea was 3 hybrid chickens – one each of red, white, and black. By the time the coop was built, we’d worked out that we really wanted heritage breeds – the girl voted for Light Sussex and Buff Orpingtons, the boy was crazy about Wyandottes and also wanted Black Australorps and Isa Browns. It looks like we’re going to exceed our henhouse capacity before our current wishes are satisfied. And the boy is already talking about incubating…
- Make the henhouse wider, even if we did build it to only house 8 chickens, now that we’ve learned more about chicken dynamics, and especially integration needs since we are attempting to construct a mixed flock.
- More ventilation! The boy thinks we have enough, but the girl thinks we’ll need more. Luckily there are options for creating extra windows for summer, and even a few more feet of permanent ventilation we can crib by opening the shed gables.
- Put the human people door another bay further away from the henhouse – the ramp runs across in front of it. There’s a bit of room to get past, and the ramp is easily removable if we want to get a wheelbarrow in there, but it was a silly thing to overlook.
- Paint all the timber with one coat before construction. We did do a lot, but even though the girl is rather small, getting under the henhouse to paint the timbers under there, not once but twice, was at least once too many.
- Do the paving straight after the footings were completed. We left the paving until the end, and by then rain had splashed our beautiful white timber and made the bottom quite dirty. And the girl skimped on the width of the paved area (because that was her job and she had to dig out quite a lot of soil and rocks), and then realized it absolutely needed to be wider so had to dig it out further and re-lay quite a lot, because of the re-digging.
The Residents - The coop was open for business, but due to the Great Covid Lockdown, the boy and girl couldn’t see how they could get any residents. However, thanks to the magic of Facebook, they discovered that someone just across town was selling 3 Light Sussex, which was the girl’s pin-up chicken breed. The girl quickly rang them and secured 2 of the chickens to her name with a bank deposit. When the boy heard the tale, he was sorry for the poor single chicken left alone and insisted on acquiring her as well. Now it just remained to obtain possession of the chookies before they reached retirement age! Carefully reading the copious rules pertaining to the Great Covid Lockdown, the boy discovered that it was permitted to travel in order to attend to one’s livestock. Since the chookies were now the livestock of the boy and girl, one of them could legally travel to attend to them, and thus transport them home. Yay!
The first residents of the Chookie McMansion duly arrived the next weekend:
Eggberta, Eggatha, and Endora, are collectively known as the Fat Bottomed Girls. Previously, they had been living in a chicken tractor and were sadly behind with their chookie education. They spent their first day in a fenced-off corner of the orchard, while the boy and girl finished the fencing of their permanent yard. In the evening they were escorted to their new coop, where they stared in confusion at the ramp. The boy and girl picked them up and put them in the henhouse, where they settled down on the floor. They were then deposited on the roost, and although surprised to find themselves sitting up in the air, were very impressed by the late afternoon view, and settled down for the night.
The next morning they had hopped off their roost but had not attempted the scary ramp. The boy tempted them down with a handful of pellets, but they were not impressed. The girl put extra cleats on the ramp and they were much happier, as the next morning they took themselves out of the coop and went exploring in the yard before the girl and boy were even out of bed. By the third day, they put themselves to bed at a respectable time, well before the auto door closed, and in 4 or 5 days they had the treadle feeder under control, had made their own dust bath, despising the elegant one the boy had constructed and were happily eating pellets directly out of the hands of the girl and boy, who had already bored all their friends and relations with dozens of photos and stories about their remarkable chickens (virtually of course).
By the end of the second week, the first eggs started to arrive. Eggberta had initially attempted to make a nest on the treadle of the feeder, but the boy quickly picked her up and deposited her in the nest box (OK, I lie, he didn’t quickly pick her up, he sat and laughed at her for quite some time). Since that time Eggberta has consistently used the right-hand nesting box. Eggatha was the next to reach grown-up status, but despite the good example set by her sister, she insisted on laying in a corner of the henhouse. The boy and girl have had to watch carefully for signs she is about to lay, and imprison her within the nest box, much to her disgust, but they are hopeful a few days will do the trick.
Also by the end of the second week, the boy felt it was time to increase the flock, and ordered two Isa Browns to be delivered (in a Covid-safe manner) by another local chicken breeder. The girl rolled her eyes again and said to the boy “you can’t just throw them in with the FBGs you know, they have to be integrated!”
“Well…” said the boy, eyeing off the abandoned toy coop, behind the garage “there is That Thing…”
But that’s a story for another day…
