Caity and family used The Garden Coop walk-in chicken coop plans to build and customize the perfect coop for their North Carolina home. Take a look at the details they added, including the painted chicken art, and read on for her notes on all they did to make the coop their own. The rest of this post comes straight from her. . . . 

About the coop plans

First off, your instructions were terrific! They are very clear with a ton of diagrams — perfect for a couple of newbies. They are absolutely worth the cost and saved us a ton of headache trying to figure out how to build something on our own.

Our modifications

1. We liked the external egg boxes, but I made the roof of it hinge as well. We also only made two and shifted them to one side. (See photos below.)
2. Heat is more common here than cold, so I added a couple of windows with shutters. Plus we love looking in and seeing what the chickens are up to.
3. We went with the side pop door instead of the floor door, then made it open from outside the coop on a pulley system.
4. We put cinder blocks all the way around the base, then lined them with landscaping fabric so we could fill the run with sand to promote good drainage.
5. Instead of one clean-out door in the coop, we put two — one on the right front and one on the left back. I’m short, so one middle door would have made it hard to reach the corners.
6. We swapped a tin roof in for the polycarbonate. It was less expensive, and our backyard is heavily wooded, so I thought the see-through roof would look dirty all the time.
7. We swapped out the cedar boards for plywood to save money.

Coop photos

Cost to build

In the end the coop cost us just under $600 to build (taking into account all our modifications). We didn’t have any materials to start, this being our first building project, so we had to buy everything (except paint) new, and I tracked all our expenses on a spreadsheet — so that total is pretty accurate. We did save some money by getting the plywood at a Habitat Restore for $8 a sheet and shopping around for the hardware cloth.

Thanks again. So far we’re really happy with the coop — and so are our chickens!

Many thanks to the Swifts for sharing their photos and comments. If you like what they’ve done, let them know with a comment below. Here are  the chicken coop plans they used, by the way. And if you’d like to see more examples of our customers’ chicken coop builds as they’re posted, along with tips on building coops and keeping chickens in general, subscribe to Coop Thoughts. It’s free, ad-free, and you can unsubscribe at any time. 

Karen and her family in Maine used our chicken coop plans to put together this Garden Ark for their backyard flock. She made a few modifications to suit her needs — using wider lumber for the skids, adding handles, and securing the bottom for complete predator protection. 

We live in Maine on the edge of a wooded area with foxes, so we added green vinyl-coated garden fencing (like rabbit fencing) to the bottom of the run.

The deeper skids give me options for using bedding in there as needed. The handles are a huge help with moving it — it is substantial and sturdy.

It took us some time trying to get it built with two young kids to care for, but our oldest who is 6 was excited to see pictures of your son helping with the construction. They both wanted to help in whatever ways they could.

The plans were very detailed and straightforward to follow. And I’m a veterinarian, so I know how important the ventilation part is. I love how The Garden Ark accomplishes that. Thanks again for the great design!

Oh. . . and the nipple waterer (1-gallon size) fits perfectly in the ark!  I was really happy to be done with scrubbing out the waterer we had in the brooder box.

Many thanks to Karen and her family for sharing their feedback and photos. If you like what they’ve done, please let them know with a comment below!

As an early and active participant in Urban Chicken Advocates of Nashville, artist Megan Lightell helped with the push to make backyard chickens legal in Tennessee’s capital. And when the ordinance finally passed in early 2012, she celebrated right away by building her dream coop. The rest of this post comes directly from her. . . . 

Just wanted to thank you again for the plans and to let you know that we finished our coop! We made a few minor alterations and added some embellishments:

• Used local cedar for the dimensional lumber and salvaged barn wood from Tennessee tobacco barns for the siding.
• Trimmed the window with wood from the barn that stood on my childhood home.
• Weaved a green sapling through the door frame and landscaped with small boulders all around.
• Added hinged doors to the bottom of each side to allow access to a rotational day-grazing area. The hens graze in one large garden area to the side of the coop, then will rotate to the other side at the end of the cool weather season, enabling us to plant fall crops where the current grazing area is. And the hens will clean out the remnants of the cool-weather crops that are currently growing in the garden area.

We love it! Couldn’t be happier. It is our dream coop, and we love having our hens visible from the back of the house, just off our patio. Now that our hens are legal, we are so happy to enjoy them and welcome them into the garden. They are happier than ever with the extra space, and the coop is so easy to maintain. The plans were great — very easy to follow.

More photos of Megan’s backyard chicken coop and garden

Many thanks to Megan for sharing her coop photos and notes on building with The Garden Coop plans. If you like what she’s created, please let her know with a note below. And if you find our posts helpful and want to receive email notifications as posts are published, subscribe to Coop Thoughts.

One of the nice things about The Garden Ark mobile chicken coop is that you can move it around your yard or garden to focus your chickens’ grazing activity where you want it — just roll it across your lawn or place it atop your vegetable rows.

But what if you prefer to garden in raised beds? How can you incorporate The Garden Ark into your garden rotation so that your hens can graze, till, and help fertilize your garden before or after harvest?

In this tutorial, I show you how to build a raised vegetable bed that fits The Garden Ark design perfectly. 

A few notes before getting started on your veggie beds

Assess your skill level. If you’ve used our coop plans to build your backyard chicken coop, this project should be a snap.

Time. About 30 minutes per bed? Let me know in the comments.

Measurements. Maybe you altered the footprint of your Garden Ark when building it, or maybe you have another chicken coop design altogether. Feel free to modify the measurements to meet your needs and coop. Metric units appear in green.

Safety. Read our disclaimer. Follow all manufacturers’ instructions when using tools, materials, or equipment. Protect your eyes, ears, and limbs. Build safe, and have fun!

Raised bed plans for your Garden Ark chicken tractor

Materials List (to build one 5′ x 3′ raised bed frame – 1450 x 865 mm)

• 2  8-foot (2400 mm) two-by-tens. You can use two-by-sixes on up to two-by-twelves if you prefer. Note: The wood will be in direct contact with the ground, so either choose a naturally rot-resistant species like cedar or redwood or use a cheaper softwood (spruce, pine, fir) and seal it well or preserve it with a garden-safe product like Timber Pro UV Internal Wood Stabilizer.
• About a 2- or 4-foot length (600 mm) of a two-by-two. See note above.
• About 20 or so 3″ (75 mm) exterior screws
• About 16 or so 2 1/2″ (64 mm) exterior screws

Tools List

• Circular saw or handsaw
• Couple of sawhorses
• Power driver/drill
• Tape measurer
• Pencil

Instructions

Cut each of 2 two-by-tens into a 60″ (1450 mm) piece and a 34″ (865 mm) piece. These will make up the outer edges of the frame (see diagram below). Note: if you adjusted slightly the measurements on the skids of your ark to account for the milled dimensions of the lumber you used, make those same adjustments here. You simply want the outer dimensions of the raised-bed frame to match those of the skids on your ark.

Cut the two-by-two into two 11″ (280 mm) pieces. These will be the corner pieces, which will stick up about 1 1/2″ above the height of the frame to “lock” the base of The Garden Ark in place. You only need two at opposite corners to accomplish this. If you prefer one in each corner, cut four pieces.

Lightly sand the cut pieces and paint, seal, or treat them as needed with a non-toxic wood preservative like Internal Wood Stabilizer. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for any product you apply and allow the proper time to cure before exposing the wood to moisture.

Attach the two-by-ten pieces together to form the outer edges of the frame, using 3″ (75 mm) exterior screws, three or four per joint. Refer to the diagram for placement. You will probably want to pre-drill the holes to prevent splitting.

Attach the two-by-two pieces in opposite corners using a couple of 2 1/2″ (64 mm) screws. Drive the screws through the two-by-two and into one of the two-by-tens. Notice the direction of the grain in the wood and try to sandwich the grain with your screws. This reduces the chance of splitting. If you want to give the corners of your frame extra hold, screw the two-by-two into both adjoining two-by-tens.

Level out the ground where you will be placing the raised beds. Then set the beds in place, fill with topsoil, and plant your garden.

When you’re ready for the hens, set The Garden Ark atop a raised bed, so that the corners fit around the two raised two-by-twos. Adjust the height of any hanging feeder or waterer, and let the chickens manage the rest. (I should mention, the pop door on the front of the ark pictured here is not described in the plans, but will likely be part of a future post.)

Done! Enjoy watching your chickens enjoy life.

Right at home in — and on top of — your garden

Whether you use The Garden Ark as the primary home for your chickens or as a complement to your existing Garden Coop — to brood chicks, separate out part of your flock, or simply to use it as chicken tractor — combining this mobile coop design with a few raised garden beds adds to its functionality and gives it a more established place in you garden. In fact, if you plan on stationing your Garden Ark atop raised beds most of the time, see this idea a customer sent in a while back — shaping the ends of the skids to work as handles, which makes moving your coop from one bed to the other that much easier.

And while these measurements are ideal for The Garden Ark, the principle would work with just about any similar-sized coop with an open bottom. So pass it on!

I hope you’ve found this tutorial helpful. If you want to learn how to build your own Garden Ark mobile coop, check out our chicken coop plans, available in both U.S. standard/imperial units and metric units. A hardware Quick Kit is also available (U.S. only). You might also like our free plans for grazing frames, which will help you keep your chickens in the green no matter what type of coop you have.

Unlike with the coop plans, I do not offer email support for this free raised-bed plan. But if you have any questions, comments, success stories, or tips on how to incorporate your backyard chickens into your raised bed vegetable garden, please leave a comment below, and I’ll do my best to respond.

Finally, subscribe to Coop Thoughts. You’ll get notice of the latest posts as they happen. It’s free, ad-free, and you can unsubscribe at any time. Click here to add your name to the list. You can also follow The Garden Coop on either Facebook or Google+. Thanks!

Why use a nipple waterer in your brooder?

When you commit to raising baby chicks, you’re signing on for a certain amount of mess — poop, soiled bedding, dust, spilled feed. But there’s one source of mess in the brooder you don’t have to live with.

In an open dish waterer, the water is just that — open. It’s open to chicks climbing in it, pooping in it, kicking bedding into it. In the confines of a brooder, this happens all the time, which means you have to replace the water in their drinker quite frequently to keep it full and fresh.

With a nipple waterer, your chickens’ drinking water is sealed in its container until needed. When a chick, pullet, or full-grown chicken pecks at the nipple, the water is released for them to drink, just a few drops at a time. What this means is a cleaner, drier brooder, and potentially fewer changes for you.

A pop-ular solution

You could use an old soda pop or juice bottle to make a nipple waterer for your chicks. That’s what we did a couple years ago. You drill a hole into the cap, insert the push-in nipple, then punch a small air hole in the bottom of the bottle (to prevent a vacuum from forming when in use). To fill, you put your thumb over the air hole, pour in the water, screw on the cap, then hang the bottle capside down in the brooder. Sounds easy enough, and it works as far as the bottle goes.

But how do you hang a soda bottle? There are no handles to hook on to. No loops to string wire through. You could create some kind of holder out of an old wire hanger — or, as we did, fashion a harness using an old shoelace, a key ring, and a screw. MacGyver woulda been proud.

A better way?

There had to be one. I visited pet stores, conferred with fellow chicken owners, sketched some designs. Still, nothing had the simplicity I was looking for. To clear my head, I decided to go for a ride. . .

And there it was.

Think about it: a bicycle water bottle is the perfect size for a chick brooder, it’s food-safe, and it comes with its own simple, lightweight mounting device. What’s more, the price is right, you can find them just about anywhere, and with the nozzle open, you already have the air hole you need at the top.

All that’s left to do is drill a hole in the bottom, insert a poultry nipple, and mount it inside a brooder!

Materials List

Here’s what you need to easily turn your own bicycle water bottle into a nipple waterer for your chicks:

• Bike water bottle
• Water bottle cage
• Push-in poultry nipple (available here)
• Two ¾” screws
• Small flat piece of wood (I use a small ½” thick piece of hardwood) as a backing plate if you’re attaching to a wire cage or plastic or cardboard wall

Tools List

• Power drill
• Drill bit (Size will depend on the nipples you purchase. If you get your poultry nipples from TheGardenCoop.com, you need a 3/8” drill bit.)
• Screwdriver

Instructions

Put your water bottle in the water bottle cage and mark an spot on the bottom of the bottle that is unobstructed by the cage. Ideally, this will be right in the center.

Remove the bottle from the cage and drill a hole in the bottom of the bottle. You want the hole to be as clean as possible — no nicks or burrs. Use the size drill bit recommended for the particular poultry nipples you have. (If you purchase your nipples from TheGardenCoop.com, the drill bit size should be 3/8″.)

Insert the grommet that comes with your push-in poultry nipple.

Then moisten and insert the nipple carefully into the grommet. This may be a tight fit, so don’t force it or do a lot of twisting.

Here’s a view of the nipple from the inside. Check to make sure the grommet is not torn and that the seal looks good.

Find the proper height for mounting the water bottle cage (scroll down for details) and attach your water bottle cage to the wall or frame of your brooder. If your brooder is solid wood, you can screw directly into it.

If the walls of your brooder are made of wire mesh, cardboard, plastic, or other thin material, use a backing board. You may need to pre-drill a couple of small starter holes in the board to accept the screws. With the bottle cage on the inside and the backer board on the outside, screw through the wall into the backer board and tighten until secure.

Fill the waterer with fresh water, attach the cap, then — this is important — open the nozzle. This allows air to flow into the bottle as the water is trickled out, preventing a vacuum from forming that would stop the flow of water.

What is the proper height for mounting a nipple waterer?

Hang your waterer so that the nipples are just above your chickens’ heads. If you can’t get it quite that high, a little lower will be fine. Chickens have to raise their necks to swallow. One of the nice things about a nipple waterer is that the water comes from above, trickling right into your chicks’ mouths when they drink.

Of course, your chicks will be growing rapidly, so you may want to mount your waterer higher at first and provide a platform (a wood block or two will do) for the birds to stand on when they are small. Also do this if you have birds of different heights sharing a single waterer.

Will chicks really take to a nipple waterer?

Chicks can be started on nipples in the first few days after hatching, but if you bought your chicks at a store or by mail order, give them a day or two with a dish waterer first to make sure they are fully recovered from the stress of their journey.

Most chickens figure out the nipples on their own within minutes. Gallus gallus domesticus will peck at anything, and the red casing is especially attractive to them. Once they notice that water flows from the nipples, they’re trained. Keep in mind, poultry nipples have been used in commercial chicken operations for years and are becoming more and more popular among backyard chicken keepers for the same reasons. They work!

If you’ve found this tutorial helpful or if you have any questions or tips, let me know in the comments below. If you need push-in poultry nipples or would rather just buy a ready-to-use Brooder Bottle, we offer those here, along with ready-made full-sized waterers.

Oh, and if you need coop plans and kits to build a fine home for that growing flock, look no further. You can also subscribe to Coop Thoughts to learn about new posts as they happen.

Anna and Chris’s modern Seattle home is topped with a striking barrel-vault roof. So why not build a chicken coop to match? After much research, a few sketches, plans and feedback from TheGardenCoop.com, the careful work of a local carpenter, and some personal touches, they got just what they wanted. The rest of this post comes from them. . .

Our Curved Roof Garden Coop

I bought The Garden Coop plans several months ago and asked you for help in making the roof a barrel vault. Here are the results:

• We created curved rafters to match the roof style on my house. To make them, we joined two-by-twelves to two-by-sixes and hollowed them out to save on weight. I was not the carpenter, but the fellow I used scribed an arc with a string attached to a nail perpendicular to the rafter. Once he had the first cut, he then copied the remainders.

• For the roof panels, we went up to the 12-foot Suntuf panels and cut them to a bit over 9 feet. The manufacturer specifies a minimum radius for curved applications [download PDF]. I’m not quite sure how my carpenter decided the radius — we tried a few different lengths before I was satisfied. A neighbor who is an architect even complimented me on the curves!
• I painted the hen house the same color as my house.
• We got the raccoon window from a professional stained glass artist I saw on the Bainbridge Island chicken coop tour.

Again, I’m no carpenter, but I think I could build a coop myself now if. . . I had stronger muscles (I am 78 years old) and power tools. Your instructions were straightforward and logical in their progression. Thanks again for the plans.

Anna and Chris
Seattle, Washington

Many thanks to Anna and Chris for a wonderful example of how you can use our plans to create a backyard coop that both stands out and fits right in. Like what they’ve done? Leave a comment below and let them know. 

I’ll be ready for them, anyway.

The first time we raised chicks, we rigged up a large cardboard contraption as their brooder and kept them in the garage. It did the trick, and as new chicken owners we had a lot of excess energy to put into making it work. Daily cleanup was a process, and the final cleanup (dust everywhere) was even more involved. 

This last go-round, we brooded them outside in the hen house of The Garden Ark, then graduated them to The Garden Coop hen house. That worked out really well, since keeping them outside also kept the dust outside.

But next time, the coops may still be occupied, so we’re gonna start them in one of these wire cage brooders that we now offer at TheGardenCoop.com. Take a look.

How do you brood your backyard chicks? What’s worked and not worked for you? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Marty and his son Corbin in Texas used The Garden Coop chicken coop plans as a starting point to build a beautiful backyard chicken coop — one that’s a good 60% larger than the original Garden Coop design. Marty was kind enough to share some photos and details, so if you’re looking to build a larger Garden Coop, here’s one way to go about it.

Making The Garden Coop both wider and deeper

Marty wanted his chicken coop to be spacious enough to accommodate a flock of 15 hens and a rooster. So he expanded the Garden Coop design from roughly 9.5′ wide by 5.5′ deep to 12.5′ x 7′ (3810 mm x 2130 mm). Here are some of the changes that made that possible:

• For longer top and sole plates on the front and rear walls, he started with longer (15′) (4575 mm) two-by-fours.
• For longer purlins (boards just under the roof panels), you could mend shorter two-by-twos together as described in the plans. Marty chose instead to rip (cut lengthwise on a table saw) some 15′ (4575 mm) two-by-fours to make two-by-twos. He said this was challenging and definitely a two-person job. He also added a purlin.
• For the rafters, he used wider boards (two-by-tens) and cut them exactly two feet (610 mm) longer than what the plans called for. This allowed him to maintain the proper roof slope across the deeper coop.
• He used 10’ roofing panels (3050 mm), special-ordered from Home Depot so there was no trimming necessary (they normally stock 8′ and 12′ lengths). He used two more than called for in the plans, and in some spots had them overlap by two crests to get the overall correct width.
• He added some two-by-fours for corner bracing to improve rigidity at the larger size. It is, in Marty’s words, “solid as a rock.”
• And, of course, he had to use more materials overall — wood (studs, spans, horizontal braces), hardware cloth, pier blocks, and fasteners. If you’re expanding your coop, simply calculate up from what is called for on the materials list in the plan to match the desired dimensions.

Marty’s other mods

In addition to expanding the size of his Garden Coop, Marty added a few other touches:

• He added a second tier of horizontal braces all the way around the coop to give him more options for roost placement.
• He added a removable roost inside the hen house.
• He used roofing felt behind the siding boards to waterproof the hen house.
• He plans to line the hen house floor with a single piece of linoleum. He originally used vinyl tiles for this, but found that the seams made cleaning the floor difficult.
• He opted to go with no windows in the hen house, and says that with the light coming in from the roof, he hasn’t missed windows.

More photos of Marty’s large chicken coop:

Many thanks to Marty and Corbin for sharing their handiwork with the rest of us. If you like what they’ve done or have any tips or questions about modifying The Garden Coop design, leave a reply in the comments below or email us directly. And if you find our posts helpful and want to receive email notifications as posts are published, subscribe to Coop Thoughts.

Keep your backyard chickens’ water clean and lasting longer between changes with one of our 3.5-gallon nipple waterers.

Through February only, save $5 on each waterer you order (3.5-gallon size only). Your waterer comes ready to use with lid, hooks, and changing base. Literally, just add water!

Click here to order. To get your discount, simply add a large waterer (or two, or more. . .) to your cart, then enter code FEB35.

Good through February 2013.

Our modifications

We changed just a few things to make the coop our own:

• We added insulation since it gets so cold here in northern Vermont.
• We put the hen access door on the side rather than underneath the henhouse as you and others have suggested to reduce drafts in the winter.
• We planted sunflowers around one corner of the coop in the hopes of providing the chicks with some shade.
• We added solar-powered LED lights to both the outside corners of the coop (stakes in the ground) to help us see if we ever needed to trek out to the coop in the dark and a string of smaller solar-powered LED lights around the interior of the henhouse.

More about the solar lights in our chicken coop

The solar lights provide a nice, soft glow inside the coop, and we have heard much less squawking at night since we’ve added the lights. (I don’t think our chickens liked the dark!) They also help encourage them to put themselves to bed at night.

The solar collector sits right up on the roof, by the way, and we ran the tube of lights through the hardware cloth to keep it aloft. We’re really happy with how it turned out and would recommend it to anyone interested in adding some light to their coop. The light string cost about $30 from Home Depot and the in-ground lights were about $3-4 each.

Thanks again for all of your hard work on the plans and for the wonderful customer support. We could not have done it without you!

–Susan and Ryan, Vermont

Many thanks to Susan and Ryan for their ideas and pictures. Do you incorporate any solar lights or other solar-powered systems in your chicken coop? Share your ideas and experience in the comments below!