Our second coop was a HUGE upgrade from the last one!
Jordan with some help from my dad built a 4X8 cottage style coop for our hens. It’s been with us now for 6 years and one of the things I have loved most about it is how versatile it has been! We’ve changed it up several times to fit what we needed at that time and it has been a fabulous coop and shelter for our hens. Made out of heavy plywood and 2X4 walls and a metal roof it has stood up to some serious storms packing lots of wind and has never budged an inch.
We were able to purchase playhouse windows from amazon that made the perfect fit for the house. We always kept them in front of the roosting area to help with our summer heat waves and it was easy to cover the screen with hardware cloth for added predator protection. We put doors on each side of the coop. One at the side for an extra door for when we had chicks or new pullets so we could separate them out inside and they have their own door while we kept them separated from the rest of the flock. We also had a large door built onto the back that made scraping out shavings easier. Our last door was on the other side and served as a way to clean out nesting boxes and collect eggs.
You can see from photos how many things changed over the years. We moved the roosts around a few times finally settling on a style with two roosts on either side with shelves underneath to make clean up much easier. Under one shelf we used that space for our chick nursery or a space to integrate new hens. The other side is where we ended up keeping our nesting boxes.
About a year after Jordan finished the coop we ended up with some foam insulation board and decided to put insulation in the walls. We took a trip to a local sawmill and purchased some boards to have a ship lap style wall on the outside of the insulation. Looking back I’m not sure if I would do this again. A year ago we had mice eat through the insulation and began living in the walls of the coop and with them they also brought mites. If we decided to keep the coop I would probably choose to take out the insulation and ship lap boards.
Overall this has been a FANTASTIC coop! It has kept our hens cool in the summer and warm in the winter, served as a wonderful space for both new hens and chicks, has been easy to clean.
The biggest con has been the mice (which adding the ship lap was a design flaw on my part but also fixable) and the way it it made with the doors caused a few problems with the design of having a covered run. Otherwise we would have gladly kept this coop for longer.
The Run Down:
The run for this coop was another labor of love. A 20X20 space covered with hardware cloth. There’s definitely some things we would have done differently making this space but overall it has been a good run for our chickens especially since we don’t free range them daily. If we were to re-do it all we would have done a PVC coated hardware cloth, and sandwiched the bottom of the hardware cloth in with another piece of wood instead of just relying on staples. We also would have added a hardware cloth apron across the bottom for added protection.
While this has been a fantastic run we really wanted to upgrade to a covered run and realized that posed quite a few issues with the style of coop we had along with the square shape of the run. Aesthetically I love a large square run highlighting the cottage coop in the middle but the muddy season had us wishing everyday for a little more coverage.
