The Coop

A couple of years ago, I built a chicken coop to house our little flock. Most of the frame was reclaimed from an old cedar swing set that was slowly deteriorating on the property. Some plywood and shingles and one unused patio door later, and we had a coop.

This is the business side of the coop: the chicken ramp and the egg door. The egg door is a bit finicky simply because the hens love to cram straw in the hinge crevice, which makes it difficult to close at times. It does make egg collecting easy.

The front shot shows the old patio door, which provides lots of light for the hens all year. It also pivots up to let in fresh air. Below the glass is another small door that folds down. This one is backed with chicken wire so that it can be left open at night.

The other side image shows the "human" entrance that allows us to get in and change the straw and feed and water everybody.

These are the youngest chickens in the flock; five ameraucana's that we've had for about two months.

This is a long shot of the coop in it's little pasture. You may have noticed the strand of electric fence around the pen: This is a new addition, and not really for the chickens. A couple of weeks ago, we had two adult red foxes showing a kit to hunt, and they chose to use our chickens as target practice. Fortunately, we heard the commotion before we lost anybody, but it definitely pushed us to upgrade our fences. Of course our big, scary rooster slept through the whole thing, curled up in a nesting box in the coop.