As I mentioned in my last post, we’ve spent this quarantine time Building a Better Chicken Coop than we had before. I have so much information on chicken coops that I decided it was best to share it over two posts. In the first post, I talked about ventilation and predator proofing. This post will focus on more of the optional features and how I incorporated them into the design of our new chicken coop. We’ll start with the most important part…..the coop name!
What’s In A Name
Ahhhh, the name! Mel thought I was crazy when the name of our coop was at the top of my list of things to do, that is until our first trip to Home Depot. As we were checking out with $500 worth of lumber, hardware, nails, and tools (because a new project is a great excuse to buy that new tool he’d been eyeing) one of the employees asked me what project we were working on. I gleefully started in about the chicken coop we were building. She smiled and said “That sounds amazing! You’ll have to come up with a cute name for it.” I grinned as I looked to my husband. He laughed and said “Oh, she already has one.” He smiled at me and said, “Go ahead. Tell her.” With a huge grin I said, “The Fluffy Butt Hut!” She gushed as we giggled like school girls.
The Fluffy Butt Hut
A classic farmhouse design with a little bit of whimsy. This chicken coop screams me! The focal point of our backyard will be the inspiration for our dream house one day. A cozy little farmhouse on 10 – 20 acres where we can have a ranch full of animals and some organic produce. Our own little patch of heaven that we can share. Self-sustaining and interactive. This is our dream, but for now, we start with our “practice farm” as I call it.
The Hen House
I knew right away a Board & Batten style exterior was the only option. I spent hours drawing plans and looking at pictures of chicken coops all over the world. We knew from the beginning we’d only have a handful of hens to start with as per our zoning, so we didn’t need anything too big. A 4-foot square design is what I chose. I also knew I wanted a black and white color theme with possibly some grey. I left open the idea of adding another color as well.
And speaking of zoning, be sure to check with your city’s Compliance Officer. I’m glad we called before we started. We found out there was an ordinance that required any out building (including a chicken coop) to be a minimum of 3-feet away from all fence lines and 6-feet away from our house. It would be terrible to have to relocate a coop after it’s established. We built ours 3 1/2-feet away just to be safe.
Flooring
I really like how my friend Amanda has vinyl flooring in the bottom of her chicken coop. It makes for easy clean up. Wood soaks up everything so to keep odor and germs away covering the floor is a great idea. I couldn’t find reasonably priced piece for our coop so I looked for other options.
The first thing I tried was contact paper. It looked adorable, but it was a total fail! One day in the sun and all the edges pulled up. I tried using spray adhesive to stick it back down but it didn’t really hold well. Then when Mel put his tools down on it, it scraped easily. That was not going to work with chicken feet.
I decided to paint the floor instead. We used a primer/paint combo and I put two good coats down. This ensured the flooring was sealed properly and the wood would be protected.
Roosts
Learning from our past mistakes, the roosts are safely nestled farthest from the door or suspended up above. It’s best to have plenty of room on the roosts since this is where the ladies sleep. What to use for the roosts was one question we had but after some research I learned that a flat, untreated 2×4, with the 4-inch side up was the best choice. This allows for the girls to sleep with their feet stretched out flat and gives them plenty of room to sit down on their knees while they sleep.
I chose to use 3 roosts in our coop. Chickens have their own flock hierarchy. A head hen will develop naturally. The higher up in the flock ranks you are, the higher the roost you sleep on. I thought having 3 roosts would give the girls plenty of room to work through their social standings.
Nesting Boxes
Admittedly, I went a little crazy with the nesting boxes. You actually only need 1 box for every 3 – 5 hens. One would have been enough for us. Although, any chicken parent will tell you, you can never have enough nesting boxes! They usually all end up fighting over the same box anyway, but why not give them options. I chose to go with 4 boxes strictly because I loved the look of the stacked design.
Nesting boxes are a standard size of a 12-inch cube for most breeds. Larger hens, such as Jersey Giants, will need a wider box about 14-inches.
I’ve read many different opinions on how high your nesting boxes should be. Some say a minimum of 18 inches from the floor is best to keep your hens from sleeping in the nests (it’s about keeping the eggs clean). Others says ground level is fine. I chose to slightly elevate our boxes and add a 4-inch front piece to help keep the box materials and eggs safely inside.
Whatever you choose, be sure your boxes are in a safe, private location. Preferably darkened and quiet. Laying eggs is serious business and hens like to have a little privacy.
Access to the nests are another thing to consider. I originally designed the boxes to have an exterior hinged lid. Since our coop is only 4-foot wide, I opted to ditch the hinged lid since I can easily reach the nests from the people door. Eliminating the hinged lid cuts out a possible entry for predators.
The People Door
You want to make sure your access door is large enough that you can physically get inside the chicken coop. This is important both for ease of cleaning out the coop, and also for access should you have a sick hen that requires help. Like I said above, I don’t recommend the roosts be next to this door, but it’s okay if the nesting boxes are as long as you have a secure access door. Hens typically only use the boxes in the daytime when they’re laying or brooding so nighttime predators shouldn’t be a problem..
Roof
The hen house roof needs to be extremely secure. We started with 1/2-inch plywood and covered it with roofing paper. Finally, we topped it with shingles. We chose Oakridge Sierra Gray Laminate roofing tiles. The color went well with my design and is part of their stay cool line which helps in our summer sun.
For the chicken run, I originally designed a shorter run, about 4 feet high. I was going to use a corrugated Polycarbonate roofing that was tinted but see through. We decided to make the run 6 feet tall so we could stand inside to interact with the hens and make it easier to clean. I no longer needed a see-through roof. We really love the look the corrugated roofing, so we stuck with that but went with a solid, Foamed Polycarbonate roofing. I chose the Castle Grey color to coordinate with the hen house roofing.
Guess What?
Chicken butt! Yep, I went there! Remember when I said I like a little whimsy? Well, I really do! My original design called for a plain door. I played around a bit with colors. I even sent pictures to my friend Taralyn who’s an amazing interior designer and asked her opinion. She gave me some really great suggestions. In the end I stuck with the black and white because it reminded me of a See’s Candy hut!
Now I was left with a plain black chicken door. It looked nice but wasn’t quite right. I sat on the floor of the run thinking of the chickens, looking for inspiration. I kept imagining the hens running up the ramp into the hen house with their cute, little, fluffy, chicken butts…….
Quickly, I ran inside to my computer and spent the afternoon working on a chicken butt silhouette! After I painted it in white on the door, I was itching to write “Guess What?” across the top (Yeah, I’m a mom of all boys), but was it too much?
I have a group chat with some of my besties. We chat about all sorts of nonsense. I sent them pictures since they know me best and it was a resounding YES! I’m so glad I did because I absolutely love it!
A standard chicken door measures 10-inches by 13-inches. You’ll need to add a few inches for larger breeds Jersey Giants.
The Ramp
There really isn’t any grand information on coop ramps. They can be any size, shape, or angle you want. They should be at least 10-inches wide to give the hens enough room to walk safely. The rungs can be made from just about anything. We used some of the scrap pieces from the hen house. They should be securely attached about every 6-inches or possibly slightly closer for steeper ramps. We set ours 5-inches apart and I painted them black against the white ramp just for fun.
If you want, you can hinge your ramp to fold up at night for added security. Most of the time chickens will just fly up to the hen house or out. They are birds after all, but occasionally they want to strut their stuff and a ramp gives them the perfect runway.
Run Chicken, Run
The chicken run is essentially the chickens living space. This is where they spend most of their time. You will feed your flock in the run, they will take their dust baths there, play chicken tag, and spend their days hunting for the unsuspecting bug that’s mistakenly wandered in.
Give your girls plenty of room to roam. About 10 square foot per chicken is best, although they can make do with about half that. The more room you give your flock, the healthier they’ll be. Our coop is about 55 square feet plus there’s the additional 16 square feet in the hen house that they have access to in the daytime should they choose.
No matter what size you choose, be sure to have a securely latched door both inside and out. If you have a run large enough for you to go inside, you will need a way to latch the gate from the inside. You wouldn’t want your girls getting out and potentially lost or hurt while you’re inside the run.
Visual Tricks
I mentioned the use of Hardware Cloth in my previous post. It’s the perfect screen to keep your flock safe while they’re in the chicken run. The only problem is that it’s not that appealing visually.
The squares are much smaller than Chicken Wire (which is exactly the point for for security) which makes it more difficult to get a pretty visual of the girls in their run. I found a pin on Pinterest about painting the Hardware Cloth with black paint to make is visually disappear. This sparked my interest because the black color went better with my chicken coop color scheme than the shiny silver would.
Hocus Pocus
Mel was skeptical until he tripped over it twice while it was laying on the grass after I painted it! The second time he said,”I guess it really does work.”
It was a lot of extra work, I’m not going to lie. Brock and I unrolled the wire bundles, measured it to the correct size, cut the pieces – making sure to trim the ends so they wouldn’t poke anyone, anchor it down so it wouldn’t curl back up, paint one side black (We quickly switched from liquid paint to spray paint. We had a total of 260 sq feet of Hardware Cloth to paint.), and on a few pieces, we painted the back side as well.
We only painted the sides people were visually going to see, after all, that’s the whole point of it. It’s not going to do the back fence any good to have it painted black on the back side, but that back piece is visible inside the coop from the front so we did paint the side that faces in.
At one point, one of the ends pulled loose, snapped back to a curl, and clocked me on the bridge of my nose! Luckily for me it wasn’t the end that had the wires still poking out or else I made have ended up at the hospital.
Even with all the extra work, I’m extremely glad we did it! The outcome made it totally worth it!
A Little Glam
I thought we were finished until my husband came home from work yesterday and made a bee line for the coop. He said there was something he’d been thinking about and wanted to fix. He proceeded to trim the fronts of the nesting boxes with trim so they’d “look nice”. No, I’m not making this up. If you follow me on Instagram then you’ve seen the photos of him chick sitting while I clean the brooder, or videos of him putting the girls to bed in their coop. Forget chicken mamas, we’ve got a chicken papa!
Well, since he was making the nesting boxes cute anyway I decided to add one last touch myself. I had ordered farm fabric a month ago to make egg aprons (coming soon to my shop). It finally arrived just in time to make the curtains I’d been planning-the added purpose of these I’ll talk about in a later post.
Whimsy
The first time I saw a chicken swing on Pinterest it went straight to the top of my list! When I designed the Fluffy Butt Hut, I purposely put it high enough in the air to put a swing underneath. So far, the girls have each hop on for a few seconds and hopped back off. Given enough time they will be swinging in rain or sun.
The other finishing touches were just for me. I added signs that I made and have plans for cute lights coming later on, all for our own enjoyment. We like to entertain. Barbeques are a staple at our house and the whimsical touches we’ve added to the Fluffy Butt Hut will add entertainment for us all.
I’m happy to share our whimsical chicken coop with all of you. I hope some of the information I’ve shared, and elements of my design will help inspire you with your chicken coop or other animal pen designs.
A Family That Works Together
Everyone in the family pitched in on this project. Even my brother, Garlan, who was here on his vacation time helped with running the caulking and giving us an extra hand where ever he could. He even ordered dinner a few nights for all of us so we could keep working and not have to worry about feeding the family. He was a lot of help!
And that new tool Mel found an excuse to buy…..it’s the Ryobi Pin Nailer. What a lifesaver!!! I’m not a paid promoter of Ryobi. I don’t even know if they do that sort of thing but we are huge fans around here! If you’re looking for tools that do a great job, are easy to use, and affordable, I highly recommend Ryobi! Now we just need to get the Ryobi Hinge Install Kit before our next project.
Happy homesteading!