There was an article not too long ago on Chow about what you should DIY and what you should buy. One, or I guess two, of the things she said you should buy are chickens and eggs. Why? Because it cost the author of Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn’t Cook from Scratch, Jennifer Reese, $3000 just to build the fence around her coop she stated that having chickens just wasn’t worth the cost. Well of course that would be the case! I left some rather choice words in that article just because I knew it didn’t cost that much to make a well built chicken coop. After all we have built several of them. This is our 5th coop building. We’ve learned over time what works and what doesn’t.
Last week I posted about how we needed to move our chickens to a new coop. Well, they are all tucked in now enjoying fresh ground to scratch around on. The area is smaller but the no longer have to share the space with the goats. Things are are easier for them to get to like the feeder which used to have to be hung next to a roost so the goats couldn’t get to it. That always proved to be difficult for the new young birds to find and get to.
Except for the chicken wire that we used to finish enclosing the coop, everything we used to build the coop with is reclaimed material. Because we do have a lot of building projects going on and we also pick up stuff for free when we come across it, we generally have a pile of building materials (most people would call it a junk pile) that we can pull from. From that pile we pulled:
- 4′ high chainlink fencing to finish enclosing the bottom half of the coop
- Redwood fence boards for siding
- Plywood for nest boxes, door and roof
- Wire fencing material for upper half of coop
- Galvanized metal conduit for framing the yard portion and for roosts
- 2x4s for some of the framing and for roosts
- 4×4 posts that were still in the ground from our last coop
- Corrugated metal sheeting for roof
The coop isn’t 100% done yet as we still need to put on the metal roof (we have the sheeting already) and I want to put some trim on it and then paint it sage green with white trim. So it will probably run us about $100 overall.
 |
Print 
PDF
Very nicely done! While I admit that with some good ol’ Yankee ingenuity one can build coops on the cheap, not everyone is gifted with the knowledge of how to swing a hammer, or use a drill, and not everyone is married to a Tom either
Those who have to resort to hired labor, do pay accordingly!
Also, as someone who is about to spend thousands of dollars on a goat enclosure, costs can increase substantially depending on one’s predator load, even in the city. Here all our animal enclosures have to be built with mountain lions and coyotes in mind, which does drive up cost. However, if your primary predators are raccoons, this is great!
Yes, predator load is definitely something that can drive up costs. The woman in the Chow article is also an urbanite here in the Bay Area so I would think that her predator load is very similar to ours. But you can even buy predator proof coops for less than $500 that can hold plenty of hens for a backyard. To say no one should raise chickens because it cost her so much money was a bit irresponsible.
I agree Rachel. I have built two practically bomb proof urban coops/runs over the last few years and they only cost me a couple hundred dollars total. We find lots of free materials from friends and family and also craigslist. The only thing we have had to buy was hardware cloth – to keep the rats and raccoons and possums out.
What?? $3,000 is pure crazy-talk! I didn’t feel like I’d be able to build a secure-enough coop on own, so I splurged for the spendy Eglu (which I love), and even THAT was only a couple hundred bucks. For $3,000, her chickens better have flush toilets and floor heaters….
That commentary on chickens really tiffed me off. We spent a couple hundred on the few things we actually needed to buy, and are still happy with that coop over three years later. The other thing that annoyed me is that there was such a huge disconnect in understanding that chickens raised at home don’t cook up like whatever Whole Paychecks is selling. Yep, a layer is going to be stringy. But guess what, she’s also going to be sooooo tasty and worth the effort. Bah. I wrote a response but doubt it’ll show up there, months later. I remember there was an article probably on Mother Earth News online, right after we’d finished our coop and had brought home our surly featherbutts, and someone had constructed this lovely enclosure for her chickens. What was growing on the outside of it? Grapes! Aside from the leaves looking like Swiss cheese much of the year, I doubt any grapes were ever harvested
Grapes are like chicken crack.
Great post! Haha, yeah I’m glad to have a dude around who is handy with a “saws-all” and found us a constant source for used pallets for building our various hutches and compost bins!
question, im thinking of building a chiken tractor and coop combined. the ground leval section will be surronded with chiken wire, total area mabee, 6′x4′x 2′ high, and the birds can leave the coop and get to the ground, but is that a big enough area. the wife isnt thrilled with chickens running around the yard, but i dont want to constrict them to much. thanks
Hi Bill! Sooooo, how many chickens do you have? The minimum requirements for hens are 2 sf per bird for the coop area and 5 sf of yard space per bird. More, of course, is always better. Go check out the coop designs at backyardchickens.com for more ideas as well! Of course you can go with the minimum space if you’re moving them around the yard in a tractor.
We spent $3000 on our coop/goat barn, and that doesn’t include any of the fencing/posts/roof for the run. It does get very cold here, and the worst predators in my neighborhood are humans, so it has to be extremely secure, and also attractive. Too, my husband is a perfectionist, so it is admittedly overbuilt, but nothing fancy. If you don’t have the time or the tolerant neighbors to scrounge materials, it can really add up.
$3000 is insane. That has to include the cost of hire someone else to do it? If not, did she build it out of virgin hardwood?
I love your coop! It looks like it is a perfect California coop with tons of space and ventilation for healthy happy chickens.
I built a really cute, fort knox safe urban coop for less than $150. If I could do, any one could. I like Habitat for Humanity Restore down her in SoCal and craigslist for supplies.
P.S. I like your blog.
Thanks,
Leanne