OK, so maybe I won’t call it the Coop de Ville…but I bet I got your attention! That’s right, everybody, I am finally ready to post the pictures of my creation – it’s alive! It’s Alive!! Well, it’s built anyway.

This is also my first post to the new Howling Hill blog, so it’s a momentous occasion…for me anyway.

Please note that other than the concrete footings, a 4×4 and a couple of 2×4’s, all of it was built with scrap wood I got from work. I already had the majority of hardware, as well, though I did pick up some more screws and a couple of sliding bolts – ooooh, sliding bolts. Also, the plastic that you see on top came from the plate boxes at work. It’s similar to garden plastic.

OK, so here we go:

Here I am building the floor and legs. You can see the concrete piers in the background. That’s our compost bin in the upper left, by the way.

The base is done. Let’s start adding the frame!

Here’s the frame in place.

Here I’ve added the roosts, nest boxes and a wall.

Francesca being the taskmaster that she is. “Hurry up and finish building this coop! I want some fresh chicken! Meow-hahahaha!”

Doors and windows. The front door will slide via a rope through some eyelets. The windows are hinged and will be held open by pieces of wood. The side door is so we can access the nest boxes and snag those yummy eggs!

I made the back wall removable so that cleaning the coop would be easier. There are studs mounted onto the wall that fit into holes in the floor. The wall then bolts (sliding bolts!) into the side walls to keep it on.

The finished product. The ramp is removable via hooks and eyelets. The black plastic is temporary. I need to scrounge some metal roofing from somewhere.

Here’s the inside.

Originally, the food and water was in the middle of the coop, on the floor. (Yeah, OK, so I wasn’t thinking. I never had chickens before! Cut me some slack, Jack.) That didn’t work at all well, so I put them on 4×4’s. (Yeah, that’ll keep the chickens from scratching wood shavings into the bowls. Of course, that just gave them some place high to sit and poop and knock shit over.) Still not one of my better ideas, so I came up with the feed station. You’ll note that I put angled overhangs above the feeding station and the nest boxes, to keep the damn birds from sitting on them. Before I added the one over the nest boxes, that’s where the chickens were sleeping every night. They wouldn’t use the roosts. Now they’re roosting where they should.

There are still some design flaws that I need to work on but overall I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. The coop size is appoximately 4 ft high from the floor, 3.5 ft deep and 5.5 ft long.

I will now leave you with some pictures of the chickens. The breed is Red Star. They are a cross of New Hampshires, Rhode Islands and Leghorns. Their names are Soup, Buffalo, Parmesan and MacNugget.

Welcome Friday Ark viewers!