The Chicken Coop

If you follow me at all on Facebook, you know that I have spent a good portion of the spring and early summer building a chicken coop. It has been a long journey, but finally, the coop is complete!

This project has been more than just a utilitarian effort to house our new chicks. In fact, in my minds eye, it wasn’t even a 12’ x 4’ chicken coop that I was building, but a 12’ x 24’ post and beam barn with workshops and storage. You see, that is what I really wanted to build. I have always loved old barns. I’ve spent countless hours exploring old barns, at places like Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, Fort Number 4 in Charlestown, NH, The Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, NY, and privately during my surveying career and as a kid growing up. I have spent hours, since I was kid, browsing through books by Eric Sloane about life in the 1800’s, and about old tools and old buildings.

A couple years ago, I bought this book on timber frame construction; my “Bible” on how to build my own post and beam barn. I have always wanted my own barn; a place to house a few animals, to store firewood, to have a woodshop, and a small blacksmith shop… a place to work on artistic endeavors, and a place to keep all my gardening tools and outdoor stuff dry.

Finally, a couple years ago, I decided to build a small shed from scratch, in post and beam fashion, using only hand tools. A first shot model for my future barn. I cut down trees for posts and hewed logs for cross supports, beams, and floor joists. I cut mortise and tenon joints and fastened them together with wooden pegs. By the time I got to the roof, I was a little tired hewing, to be honest, making strapping seemed like areal chore and required so many trees, and my attempt at making pine shingles proved VERY labor intensive and required a lot of practice and a lot of dry wood without knots… so… I opted out and bought rough cut lumber and cedar shingles. I also bought the 12” planks for the floor.

The shed…it’s nice, but it was my first attempt, and I used a lot of round, crooked, & various size woods, without a square angle or edge in the bunch. I still need to put the 12” pine board vertical siding up. Still, it looks very rustic and like an early 1830’s shed. Mission accomplished!

This year, once we started talking about chickens, I decided that we needed a new coop. Our old one was too small, and as I had built it 8 years ago with plywood and 2x4’s without paint or anything… it was beginning to have issues. I could have gone the easy route and bought a coop plan on-line and did the plywood thing again, but instead, I decided to build my barn - in miniature.

I bought rough-cut 4”x4” beams and 12” pine boards from this fantastic local saw mill run by 2 sisters. I based the design on the small barn design in my “Barn Bible”. I decided not to go with wood pegs, but nails. I also went with the cedar shingle roof. Cedar smells sooo good!

Originally, the coop was going to have wooden wheels at the base of the posts, so it could be mobile, with a trap door in the floor and a ramp so the chickens could access the area under the coop, which would be fenced in. As the chickens scratched and ran out of plants, worms and bugs to eat, I would move the pen. Well…I can still move it, even without the wheels, but damn, this coop is heavy, so decided to keep it where it is for now. I’m going to cut a door off the back, once the chicks get older, and fence in an outside pen for them along the bank between the coop and the shed.

 

The chicken wire panels in the front come off for easy cleaning of the coop and for replacement with plexi-glass windows in the winter. There is a main access door at one end and a nest access door to the 3 egg nests on the other end.

This was such a fun project and one I am really proud of. I enjoyed building it and it adds a nice aesthetic to the back yard.

Of course now, I want to tear down my rustic shed and build the full sized barn project from my book. I’m sure there are a few other priorities to attend to before that plan comes to fruition.