They’re here! Our new chicken coop hardware Quick Kits for The Garden Coop and The Garden Ark let you build your backyard chicken coop even easier and faster.
In one box you get all the screws, staples, nuts, bolts, washers, nails, roofing screws, latches, hinges, braces, and more that you need to build your coop. All that’s left for you to shop for are the bulky items: wood, roofing, hardware cloth, pier blocks (Garden Coop), and stain/paint. (more…)
Allowing your chickens to graze on fresh grass is a good thing — not just for them, but for you as well. The nutrients in green vegetation enhances the quality of their eggs and meat. And since fresh greens can make up about 20-30% of a chicken’s diet, providing them for your chickens can save you on feed costs.
But keeping your chickens supplied with fresh greens can be a challenge. When chickens have plenty of room to roam, they will graze a little off the top, then move on. When forage space is limited, however, as in a small urban or suburban backyard, chickens will continue to graze and scratch in the same spot until the vegetation is torn down to the roots.
An easy solution? Grazing frames! (more…)
Matt Allison of Cape Town, South Africa has posted this article about being the first in his neighborhood to start keeping chickens, adding a flock of four to his growing backyard garden. If things trend the way they have in many of the neighborhoods I’m familiar with, his neighbors will soon be following his lead.
I owe Matt a debt of thanks for pushing me to complete the metric version of The Garden Ark plans. He worked with me to review measurements, materials, and process. And his suggestions will help others avoid mistakes that I never would have caught. Most importantly, his coop turned out great, as you can see by the coop pictures at his post. Thanks, Matt!
Where in the world are you building our chicken coop designs? Leave a comment and let us know.
As far as I know, Blair was the first to use our plans to build a Garden Ark in Australia. I’m very grateful to him, actually, for staying in touch throughout the process, advising me on materials available in Australia, and helping lay the groundwork for the new metric version of that plan. (more…)
What can I say, I’ve always loved our chicken coop plans. But when I opened them recently on an iPad, well, I literally saw them in a whole new light.
The images are sharp and clear. The table of contents is clickable for easy navigation. You can zoom in and out on the diagrams and text. And you can perform all the page navigation gestures that are native to iBooks.
What’s more, you don’t need to download a special app (other than the free iBooks app) to be able to download, store, and view our coop plans — or any PDF file for that matter.
Just follow the simple instructions below, and have fun! (more…)
Along with pictures of their completed backyard chicken coop, Anna and Matt sent a very thoughtful review of The Garden Coop chicken coop plans and a summary of their building process and decisions. So without further ado, the rest of this post comes straight from them:
After much research, Matt and I finally settled on purchasing both The Garden Coop and The Garden Ark plans. We had never built anything from scratch — our prior building experience topped out at putting together some cheap bookshelves and a coffee table. We had considered coming up with our own plans based on pictures of random coops available online, but we quickly scrapped the idea when we realized that we wanted to build something that was actually aesthetically pleasing.
There are quite a few books out there detailing coop plans, along with other plans that could be purchased via Internet download, but none of those plans would produce a coop that came close to the simple beauty of The Garden Coop. . . (more…)
You’ve read the books. You’ve chosen your breeds. You’ve even cleared a spot in the yard for the chicken coop. And yet, something’s still missing.
Something feathery.
It’s okay. Look, you’ve already made it from the idea stage to the planning stage, and that’s quite a big leap. Now you just have to get from planning to doing.
Here are some tips for actually making it happen: (more…)
Chicken coop design is the focus of today’s feature story over at Neighborhood Notes, a cool website focusing on hyper-local news in Portland. The Garden Coop is featured along with four other local designs. There’s a nice slideshow at the end with more pictures and ideas.
There’s a lot happening in Portland, for sure, and it’s nice to be included in such good company.
I got a nice message the other day from Mike and Dara P. of Portland who built their backyard chicken coop using The Garden Coop plans.
Their coop works beautifully in their city backyard and fits well into their neighborhood. It also makes a great backdrop for their family holiday card!
In the note they sent, they shared tips from their experience building The Garden Coop as well as some of the ways that they customized the design to work for their situation. Here are some excerpts:
“We’ve finally decided to get chickens next spring. Is fall or winter too soon to start building a coop?” —Jackie
There are some real advantages to starting your chicken coop in the fall or winter. I know many people, myself included, who’ve built their coops in less than ideal weather. But you don’t have to get cold or soaked to build a chicken coop during the gloaming seasons. Build your coop inside. Apart from the initial steps of cutting and sanding the wood, you can prep and assemble a backyard chicken coop the size of The Garden Ark in about half the space of a typical single-car garage. (more…)
We’ve been beta-testing this audio-only version of our plan for The Garden Coop. Initial reviews from family and friends were positive, but since we’ve opened up the experiment to a general audience, it’s been met with, well—how else to put this—confusion. . .
You could listen to it on your iPeck!
Well, maybe it’s back to the sound board on this one. In the meantime, have a listen (it’s shorter than you might expect), and let us know what you think in the comments.
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