Upcycled Chicken Coop Builds

This is the 22nd post in my 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.

I’m noticing more older folks, women and upcyclers are building their first coops. The results are so much more interesting and satisfying than buying a pre-fab coop or hiring someone to do the work for you. I’m hoping that their stories will inspire others to challenge themselves to do the same.

This post features two different chicken keepers’ creations from materials found at hand.

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Nathan Francisco: I live in Walnut Creek, California, about 40 minutes from downtown San Francisco.

This is my first time with chickens, sort of. I’m originally from Hawaii; chickens are everywhere there. While my grandparents had some, I never really did anything except collect eggs as a child. We’ve been wanting our own egg layers since we moved here and have the yard space for it. We kept putting it off, until a friend of ours who has had chickens for a very long time, sent us some chicks and a starter kit.

We currently have five Easter Eggers: three hens and two roosters

I’m always building, tinkering, upcycling, repurposing and reusing, but this is my first chicken coop.

I got a second-hand loft bed frame for free which was initially going to be a clubhouse/fort for my son. That didn’t really pan out (and he wasn’t very interested) so it sat for awhile until we got our chickens. I had them in one of those cheap pre-fab coops you can buy online, but as they started getting bigger, I knew I needed more space. I looked at a bunch of other structures online and they were expensive to purchase.

That’s when I started to think about making my own. When I started pricing out materials though, I was a little concerned at how much that was going to cost as well. I thought about how I could cut costs. There were a lot of people giving away free wood from their own leftover projects, so I picked up as much as I could. The overall frame and structure were my biggest concerns because a lot of the material I got for free wasn’t long enough for the coop. That’s when I looked at the bed frame and it all came together! It was already built, and it’s made of metal. All the other pieces of the build just sort of fell into place.

I did the heavy lifting, but my 9 year old lent a hand. It took us a couple of days, about 5 hours each day.

I’m currently about $100 into it. I bought all the screws, brackets, hardware cloth and a few pieces of lumber. Again, the bed frame was free, as was about 99% of the wood.

Coop

• 58″ deep, 80″ wide, 85″ tall

Features

• Built-in nest box on one of the walls
• Repurposed wood wine boxes used as nest boxes on the floor as well
• Two higher roosting bars
• Third floor “deck” that’s shaded and a little darker that they like to cozy in when it gets hotter

I would like to add a larger roaming area for them in the future. Unfortunately, I can’t let them free-range because of predators.

November 2024 Update: For those that have asked, here’s the door setup on the run extension that I built with a second loft bed. I have the roof on hinges on either side, so I can just climb in and clean fairly easily. Basically it’s the same build as the main coop: metal loft bed frame, hardware cloth, some 2″ x 4″s and some reclaimed fence boards.

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Claire Weeks: My husband and I live in southeast Texas. We tried to use as many salvaged items as possible.

• The roost bars are poles that the hens have been using for years
• I bought the the chandelier for $2 at a garage sale, then sprayed it with chrome spray paint and added new little crystals. Total: $12
• Nest boxes were found at an antique store
• The cedar was harvested by my husband, including the trim on front of the coop.
• We used sand (with lime) for easy cleaning
• Painted with environmentally-friendly ecopaint

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Thanks to Nathan Francisco and Claire Weeks for sharing their stories and photos, used with permission.

“Smart hens, messy coops, and the truth about keeping chickens.”