Chicken House

Here is the finished chicken house. The large door is for getting eggs and cleaning. The small door is for refilling the feeder.

When I was growing up we had a chicken coop. I never liked going inside the coop. I didn't like collecting eggs while the chickens flew all around me, stepping in poo, ducking because of spider webs/hornet nests, and scrapping the floor a couple times a year with rakes and pitch forks. It was a little claustrophobic. So when we designed our chicken coop, I wanted to do all those things without ever going into it at all.
We planned this for sunlight. The windows are mesh. It helps the coop vent.


These are pictures of a most wonderful accident. The original idea was to staple mesh inside this space in the coop. However, we did not consider the 2X4 on the roof. They just didn't line up. The result is a wire space that spans aver the run area. I'd heard that large chickens (ours are large) cannot stand on wire. I thought this would be a problem. However, it was a fantastic happening!

Now, the chickens roost here every night. They prefer the wire. Only two of the chickens, who are lower in the pecking order, actually use the roost. Thus, most of the waste drops into the run and NOT the coop. This has helped with cleaning.
We used 5 gallon buckets and cut half of the bottom out. These are the nesting boxes. Very easy to clean. Soap and water. And a big plus, the bugs that live on chickens cannot live on the plastic.

The floor is a fine mesh. We put several small pieces of plywood over top of the mesh. With the exception of a washing machine drip pan under the feeder. Then the drip pan catches the wasted food. Then we covered the plywood with straw.

Cleaning starts with raking the loose debris off the plywood. It goes directly into a wheel barrel because the height of the house. Then we just pull out the plywood pieces to get the caked-on debris off. We plan on replacing the plywood once a year, or as needed. No more hacking and scraping poo from the floor! And because it is not floor level, it is also much easier on our backs.

I cleaned it today, in my pregnant state, and it was hardly a chore! It took me about 30 minutes. The only issue...my tummy kept getting in the way. The 2x4 in the front limited my ability to lean into the house.

Even the under space is used. The chickens group under here to get food that dropped through the mesh and eat bugs eating their waste/food. They also use it to get out of rain and short hail storms.

I'd say Ryan did very well. To boot, this was his first ever wood building project. I'm very pleased with it. Ryan has always been handy. Living out here, he is turning into a very handy man.