A year later we're using the same coop and are quite happy with it. It was listed as a 10 chicken coop. I think that'd be tight unless they were bantam sized. We have 6 and could probably handle 2 more without a ton of crowding.
To build it, we made a frame out of 4x4's and excavated underneath so it's slightly sunken into the soil. We attached 1/2" grid hardware cloth to it with a few-inch overlap on the bottom. We chose 1/2" grid figuring that any snake that got underneath would get picked to death by the chickens. Once we finished attaching the frame bits together I bored holes in it and drove rebar into the ground to keep it from moving.
At this point Wifey and I took each subassembly out of the boxes to identify everything. The instructions weren't incredibly detailed so we had a few missteps as we built it accidentally having some inside faces going outside and the like.
Eventually, we finished assembling everything and carried (2 people were plenty since it's lightweight) and mounted it to the base frame.
Once that was complete we painted the inside with chicken-safe paint we purchased at Tractor Supply and painted the outside with Thompson's Water Seal to help make it weather-resistant.
We're quite happy with the result.
When we purchased it, we assumed it'd be a 2-3 year coop at the best. It's now 1 year old. I'll do a follow-up post to show other changes we've made to it as well as some improvements.
No comments:
Post a Comment