This is the 40th 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 backstories that might inspire my readers.
I’ve lived on the west coast of Canada for more than three decades, but came from Toronto just a hop skip and a jump from where this couple live.
My wife and I live just outside of the small town Paisley, Ontario, Canada.
I was around chickens as a kid, my grandfather had a few on his beef farm but this is our first time having chickens together. We have six Rhode Island Reds (for now, my wife says).
This is our first build. It’s all my wife’s design and ideas; we took inspiration from ideas in online chicken groups and coops we visited in person. It was a team effort. She’s helped a lot with the design and the decoration and labour. I brought her ideas to life with a buddy from town to help get it all together within a short window from start to finish.
It took three of us ten days to complete. I had the delivery date booked for the birds’ arrival and gave myself an allotted time frame to complete the project at a steady pace. However, we were also renovating our main bathroom in the house at the time, which took longer than anticipated. The birds were still coming so ten days before their arrival so we buckled down and got it done – all while working 50 hours a week at my job on night shift. It was a very long 10 days.
We had a dream and a goal, not so much a budget. I feel happy with the result of what we spent.
Dimensions
- Coop: 8’ x 10’
- Run: 10’ x 16’
- Total Structure: 10’x 24’
Features
- Feeding header (holds well over a week’s worth of feed)
- Run Chicken automatic coop door
- Nesting boxes
- Roosting bars with poop shelf below filled with sand to catch all droppings
- Chandelier
- Predator proof wire mesh dug one foot underground and on an angle as well as wire mesh on the floor of the run covered by filter cloth, crushed gravel then 3-4 inches of masonry sand
- Boredom busters like a chicken swing and many other things hanging down from the rafters of the run at chicken height for them to play with
- Solar lights and a solar fan installed for temperature control
- Added to the run: chicken tree, dust bath and a small pool to help keep them cool on the hot days
Plans for the future
- WiFi out to the coop so we can run cameras inside and out that we can control from our phones.
- My wife always has plans for the future, I guess we will have to wait and see.
Thanks to Matt for sharing their coop and photos, used with permission.
“Science-based chicken keeping with a splash of sass”
Bitchin' Chickens 
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