I had an opportunity to be part of the chicken coop building panel at Chicken Fest 2008 at Living Scape Nursery on Saturday. There were three other coops on the panel. Each coop was very different from the others, there was a true green roof planted in strawberries, a converted shed, a hen house on sawhorses, and the Tasty Shed. It was great to see how each of us created such different structures using the same principals. I think it went well, I hope the workshop attendees thought it was helpful.
Chicken Panel
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Hi,
I was at the panel on Saturday.
Your coop design is fairly similar to what I'm planning on building (well, my wood won't be as nice). I was wonder if you had plans you could share, especially with the swing down floor.
Thanks for all the info from the panel and your site.
We just picked up our chicks today and I started a blog to show their growth:
http://3chixaday.blogspot.com/
Cheers,
Josh
Hi Josh,
Unfortunately, we don't have any plans. We started with some rough sketches (dimensions and general layout), but then just sort of figured it out as we went. And all original sketches are long gone.
We had wanted to do the drop down floor from early on, but when we started building we weren't sure if we'd actually do it - we were afraid it'd be too complicated. Luckily, our friend who was helping is experienced at building things and made it happen.
Essentially, we framed out the floor just like we normally would but instead of screwing it to the frame we attached the back with hinges and the front with big bolts. If it didn't work out we figured it'd be easy enough to just attach it to the frame normally.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benish/1468517269/in/set-72157602222742046/
In retrospect, it might have been better to make the floor a little smaller than we did. The ground was not exactly level and all the lumber was not exactly straight, so the side of the floor was scraping the frame when we first dropped it down even though it fit perfectly when in the up position. (We ended up getting smooth operation by shaving down the framing with a rasp/file/sander.)
I think we could have had a less tight tolerance and just filled the gaps with more old bike tires. By the time you get all the bedding in the hen house I don't think you are going to notice any small cracks around the edges of the floor as they will quickly be filled with bedding. We were super worried about drafts so we made it a pretty tight fit.
The other tricky thing was that the doors on the front didn't have a piece of wood along the bottom to attach to. So we had to suspend all that from the ceiling and sides which was a bit of a pain:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benish/1751874637/in/set-72157602222742046/
So, keep in mind what you are building along the front edge of the floor and make sure you have a plan for attaching all that stuff to the rest of the structure.
Hope that helps,
Scott