Building a Chicken Coop - NewAgePet EcoFlex Fontana Chicken Barn - HumblevilleUSA 2016

The chicks are now pullets. The weather is warming up in SE Michigan. And the time to have the coop ready for the hens to start living outdoors is at hand. Join me and the girls as we play with our free range pullets and assemble a pre-fabricated chicken coop and pen.

Ideally I would have wanted to design and build a coop from scratch to get it just the way I think I'd like. In speaking with my friends who have done this, they spent nearly what I did. Sure, they got a coop more suited to what they wanted and how they wanted to use it, but I decided that we have many other projects that we would like to get to this spring, and this was much easier than designing the coop, creating the materials list, shopping for the components, hauling them home (and who really gets a project done with a single trip to the store?) and building it from scratch. And in my humble opinion, a project done is much more desirable than a better project planned but unimplemented.

In theory, I like the artificial wood-type product used in the construction of the coop. It is lighter in weight. It is supposed to be odor resistant. And once you open up access to the coop through the roof slats, we are supposedly able to hose out the coop for better cleaning and we don't have to worry about the rotting issue that comes with natural wood and moisture. We shall see.

Also, I haven't played around enough with the pen to see if I can get the door on the other side. Ideally I would like it switched. The panels for the coop are all pre-drilled, so switching the door to the other side did not seem possible, at least initially. The floor to the pen is open. Now we need to determine how to protect our hens from critters digging under. Maybe I will use some hardware cloth and secure it to the bottom of the sides. Maybe I will use some footers and stones to place around the pen, digging into the ground for additional security.

The girls were going to help out more in the assembly of this chicken coop build, but it was such a nice day and we had the pullets out running around in the backyard. It was just too much fun for the girls to play with the hens. No worries. This project was easy enough for one motivated, but skill challenged father.

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