Shed Style Chicken Coop

In doing this series on cool coop builds I haven’t been looking for the biggest or best, but ones that express the heart and soul of the owners that have interesting back stories and might inspire my readers.

The following coop was a project by a senior couple, self-described old fogeys, that despite health issues and lack of experience have managed to create a lovely home for their backyard flock.

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My husband Steve and I live in the west Texas town of Kermit. We are surrounded by sand dunes, pumpjacks, and oil rigs. Vast cattle ranches surround our tiny oil and natural gas dependent town of eight thousand permanent residents.

I’m 65 and have had chickens since I was nine. This is his first time. We have had other farm animals: pygmy goats, peacocks, ducks, and horses over twenty years ago. We are both disabled now. He’s a retired mechanic at a gas pipeline company, stricken with Multiple Sclerosis. I’m a Registered Nurse of 35 years, won a round with Guillain-Barré syndrome paralyzing me, only to be knocked down again a year later. 

We have five hens we raised from three days old: two Andalusians, two Easter Eggers and one Barred Rock. We live in town and are restricted to five hens and no roosters.

This is our first building project. Our only other experience was putting a pre-fab coop together. Step-by-step instructions and plenty of help made it no problem. Most people who know me would laugh at the thought that I even have chickens. As a Chief Nursing Officer I had my nails done every few weeks. A hammer and drill did not fit my hands. Needless to say, I have never built anything like this. 

To prepare, I watched hours of videos and looked at photographs of sheds. My husband and I looked at different sheds that could fit under our RV parking area. Most of the plans were “Lets see if this will work”. My husband was a mechanic and worked on huge turbine engines, but he doesn’t know how to build either.

The coop shell was built onsite by Tuff Shed. All the rest, including the inside painting and floor was done by us.

I would sit in front of the building at night and try to imagine what we needed to do, then I would start to measure. I would draw and measure, measure and draw. The next morning my husband would go over it and do the same. Then we would re-measure and cut. I would measure the wood and mark it. He would cut the wood for me. I am terrified of saws; I’ve seen too many injuries in the Emergency Room. Unfortunately I bought the door too wide for the space so I redesigned the nesting boxes and it worked out well.

Steve made sure I had the best equipment to work with. Drills or anything I need he gets for me to make my life easier. I did most of the work. In addition to having Multiple Sclerosis, Steve has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), which means he runs out of air pretty quickly. I take frequent breaks, but get things done.

The building shell was completed in mid-April and we moved our hens into it five weeks later. Our budget was $3,200 and we ended up spending $3,600.

Coop: 4’ x 4’ x 8’  Run: 16’ x 24’  Chunnel: 24’ long  Play pen run: 4’ x 6’ and they free range at least a few hours every day

Features

• 3 speed fan
• Chandelier
• Private nesting boxes
• Automatic door with decorative lighted exit sign
• Non-skid decking walkway to run
• Tile floor for easy cleaning
• Removable, washable black plastic liner pans under roosting bars
• We repurposed the white doggie gate to use as an isolation/time out area under droppings table
• The run includes a mister water feature with roosts for cooling in hot weather
• Music area with xylophone, guitar and musical notes
• Rocks and tiles placed in random areas to encourage digging
• Dust bathing area
• The flooring to the walkway is made from pool decking cutoffs
• There is a screen door wall on one side that allows good airflow for those hot Texas summers, and keeps my feed safe.
• 24’ chunnel runs between a cinder block fence and a chicken friendly garden which open into a secure play area
• The hens eat the greenery growing along the chunnel and keep bugs off the foliage

I believe you are never finished. I am always looking for interesting items to put in my coop and run. My next project: I want to do something on the walls by the roost.

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Many thanks to Donna and Steve/Memaw and Papaw for sharing their story and photos, used with permission.