Coop Deluxe

Tubleweed Tiny House Company

No, this isn't our chicken coop.

But ours will look awfully similar once we get it painted this spring.

Michael built our chicken coop from scratch. Um, no pun intended.

He used internet resources to know how much space 10 hens would need, how many nest boxes, etc. I can't tell you the finer points of the construction, but it was his own design. Most of the lumber was second-hand, some we already had and some from a colleague of Michael's who had recently torn down a building. I think we spent about $200 on supplies. The windows, with screens for predator protection, open for ventilation and let in lots of daylight. The coop even has its own outlet for the heat lamp and water warmer.

What I thought would take a couple of weekends to build, however, ended up stretching into two months or more. Meanwhile, the chickens rapidly outgrew the old rabbit cage in the basement. We had to attach our extra-large dog kennel to the rabbit kennel to give the growing birds enough room. During the last few weeks of their basement dwelling, the grew so large that the kennels had to be cleaned every day. This gave Michael the extra push he needed to finish the coop.

Nest boxes. We ended up having to give the birds two extra nests as they grew into egg-laying size. For the new nests, we used old milk crates.


Racoons are a real worry here, even though we live near downtown Des Moines. We read that a racoon can open anything a toddler can, so we tried to build as many safety features into the doors as possible.

This is their nifty back door. The ramp leads into an old dog run we converted to a chicken yard. You can see the chicken wire over the top, to keep the birds in and the predators out. To open the door, we slide a wooden bar back and pull a rope. The rope is secured to the chicken yard fence and the birds have access to the yard and their coop all day long. At night, we lower the hatch and slide the bar across the door.

The coop is insulated and even has wainscoting on the ceiling.
We have a double lot, with the garage at the end of our driveway that runs sideways behind our house. The garage sits off to the side of the yard, with the chicken yard running behind it. The coop is completely contained within our fenced yard, another necessary safety feature.
Oh, and we use an old combination lock on the front door.

It took going on last fall's Farm Crawl for Michael to realize he was over-building. Once he saw how the local farmer's housed their chickens, he realized he could finish up much faster.

The chickens are happy with their coop, I believe, as they've started laying consistently. We're now collecting as many as 5 eggs a day.

If the economy continues to tank, I figure all we'd have to do is add plumbing and we could rent it out.