“Hey, you want to bring our tractor over here to help move our garden shed?”
We enlisted our neighbor’s help, who happens to love using his tractor for any farm project, to move our garden shed from behind the house over between two outbuilding to turn it into our chicken coop last spring.
This coop has been perfect to start our flock and we wanted to share it in this chicken coop tour. We have a been through many different set ups and have finally landed with a full wall of roosting space, with nesting boxes on the other side. There are no perfect measurement out here and it is all a work in progress. It is better than when we started and that is a win! You will see that we love to repurpose and reuse anything we can from our property. There was a lot of storage left for us when we purchased this home and we are so thankful because of the ability we have to go to the wood pile and pull out a board here and there for whatever project we are working on.
DOORS
When we moved the shed there were no doors. We added the double doors and the run door, we have a full tutorial on how we made that happen coming up.
DOOR LOCKING MECHANISM
Rounded Safety Coupler Pin, Carabiner, or Padlock
We got these latches, which have worked really well. Generally the large, human door and latch are closed while the run door is open through out the day. To start, we had the Rounded Coupler Pin (called a D latch at Grit Creek) on both doors, but our kids were not able to make it work. We decided to try the carabiner and it has been working great, our oldest child is able to go out and open the run for the chickens in the morning and close them up at night.
If you live in an area that you are concerned that a human might come take your chickens or your eggs, which at the beginning of 2023 – could be a real issue. Get a padlock that fits in the door for you own peace of mind. That way no one takes a chicken coop tour of your coop without permission.
NESTING BOXES
We walk inside to get the eggs. It works for us and the chickens we have, it is not for everyone, no worries. You can see our work in progress. We have really large nesting boxes, originally we had crates inside. The chickens liked it for a while but then decided they didn’t want the crates anymore. We have plans to divide the boxes so that they are more cozy. There is also a door hinged onto the boxes. The doors have been added to the boxes because we introduced some new hens a few weeks ago and they all wanted to sleep in the boxes. When we cover the boxes, they choose to roost.
ROOSTING BARS
These are unused wood bars from other locations around the property. We love to reuse anything we can. It helps reduce the trash or storage piles here and helps reduce general waste and consumption.
LIGHT
In our coop we have a simple shop light, it is linked below, but seriously – anything will work. It help us to be able to work in the coop and helps give the chickens light during the shorter days of the year. We use something similar to this with a white, low wattage light. It’s a “shop light” at Grit Creek – it might be called other things at your house.
HEATER
Instead of a heat lamp, we use a coil, milk house heater. We turn it on low, with a timer, to cut the coldest parts of the night. Chickens do each make 10 watts of heat and can keep the coop fairly warm without any additional heat. With the heater and the chickens there has never been a frozen egg in the coop, even in freezing temperatures and wind chills pushing it subzero. Our choice to use a milk house heater is specific because if one of the ladies would knock it off the shelf, it will turn off the heated coils. Our specific model is linked at the bottom of this post.
TIMERS
We use timers on both the light and the heater. Chickens need 8-10 hours of light, daylight or otherwise, to keep laying eggs. This is the first place to start if you see your egg count going down in the winter time. It is not always just the temperature that reduces their fertility. The timers save us from having to go back out to the coop right before bed to turn off the light and turn on the heater. It has been a good change to our system. Our specific timers are nothing special – but you can find them in the shopping list at the bottom of the post.
LIGHTS
The absolute best part of this coop is the repurposed Christmas lights. These are fun, light hearted and always seem to bring a happy mood to the family. The one practical use we have it that these lights are connected to the black timer. The black timer also controls the coop light. If we have hit the ON button, gotten the dial turned or gotten something unplugged – we know from the house and someone (Cole) can go turn them off. Otherwise we would have no idea that the chickens were in the light all night long and they get a little frazzled if they are up too much. So for good moods and remembering the coop light we high suggest adding a string of lights.
update
We have recently moved our full grown chickens to a larger coop, we will be sharing that tour later. Then we moved our ‘baby’ chickens out to this space and they love it. If you are planning to get chicks, check out our blog about setting up a brooder and a free printable chick coop starter checklist HERE.
SHOPPING LIST
These items are close to what we used, but not exactly the same thing. We purchased these items at our local hardware store or the local farm store. We genuinely hope you enjoyed out chicken coop tour.
