This is the beginning of our homesteading journey. When we brought the chickens home, we only had a very small fenced area for them. It didn’t have any shade or a roof or anything. We quickly found that this wasn’t going to be enough to keep the safe and growing. The very first day they went outside, one got out of the pen and our dog ate him. So we knew we had to do something more for them if we were going to keep them safe.

So this is what hubby came up with.

He added this to the small pen that we already had. The pen started out as a garden which is why it wasn’t safe enough for the chickens. When it was time for the chickens to go outside, they still weren’t big enough to stay in the pen. Hubby had to run chicken wire around the pen to keep them in. This was the most expensive build on our property so far because we had no clue what we were doing at this time. This was the beginning of our journey.

Hubby went down to Home Depot and bought all the plywood and 2×4’s for this building. It cost us about $500 to build this coop. If only we had known then what we know now. We could have done it for almost nothing. I guess this was just one of the first lessons we would learn about homesteading.

To start them off, he made a frame for the run (the main pen we started with) to put a roof on it. He ran chicken wire around the outside of it. Then he started the frame for the coop. He did the frame the same way. This coop is not attached to the ground in any way so that it could be moved if we had the need to. The base is square with the plywood attached to it around the top. We decided that the bottom should have chicken wire so the ventilation is good through out the whole thing.

Inside the coop, he put boards across the top for roosting and a box at the back of the coop for them to lay in. Of course we didn’t know at the time that they really wouldn’t use it. The doors on the back side of the coop are to get to the eggs if they do decide to use it.

He built the ramp so they could get up to the box. At first it was just the board, but we found that the chickens would slip on it and couldn’t get up to the box. So he added the pieces on top of the ramp for foot holds so they could get up there.

We put this door in after the fact because Huckleberry is on the other side and he is a bit rambunctious for me to be able to go in his pen. This door was put in so that I could get into the chicken coop to check for eggs.

We have a new coop in the works, but for now this is where they are. They share a fenced area with Huckleberry to help keep them a little safer. But this is how we house most of our chickens.

Have a great day!

Renee