Building of chicken coop for back yard chickens

We have talked about getting chickens since March, but had so much to do in our day job, so we decided to wait until our vacation. We have spend the past months planning the coop, and looking for second hand materials to use.

We were lucky enough to find the house and the aviary second hand, at half the price. We build the run from new materials, and paid a carpenter to make the moduls for it. We could have saved a little money by building the modules our self, but we had enough work building the coop as it was!

First, I spend a weekend painting the house and the aviary. It was unpainted wood before I did this. As we want to make sure that neither the fox or rats can acces the house or the aviary, we build a full frame that we buried in the ground. We then screwed on the house and aviary on this frame.

We spend two whole days digging the hole for this frame. We have a drought and heatwave in Denmark this year, and the dirt is rock hard. Thankfully, the 22 year old boy was visiting the last day, and he spent two hours finishing the digging work for us. THANK YOU! Digging for days in 30 C/ 86 F is no fun!

We placed the house and aviary on the frame and screwed it together. Isn’t it just the cutest coop ever? I love it! Also, usually we have knee-high grass in this part of the garden, but due to the draught it has all died. It will look prettier next year when the rain returns and the plants grow 🙂 The chickens have around 6.5 m2/ 70 square feet in this ultra secured space.

Then we build the run – it is 20 m2/ 215 square feet. It is partially with roof, as the weather here is normally very rainy. This is not secured against foxes or rats – we will not feed the chickens out here, so the rats should not be a problem, and there are very few foxes in this area. Fingers crossed!

And today, finally, we picked up the chickens (now I know exactly how to pick up chicks – bring a cardboard box and that is it haha!).

Everything has gone so smooth so far; we picked them up this afternoon, and after an hours or so in the car we was home and out them inside the house. In 5 minutes the Sussex was prancing around in the aviary. She then went to the house, cackled and laid an egg! She then went for the dust bath and spent more than an hour here.

Julle and the black/ white striped chicken soon followed her, and after a couple of hours Nugget came out too. They eat and drinking, and spend the time picking in the ground. I have spent quite some time out there just watching them – so nice!