Deb and Donovan from near Seattle sent in several views of their backyard chicken coop build. Look at that flower box and window! They were kind enough to share some thoughts on their experience finding and building the right coop for their needs. The rest of this post comes from them. . . (more…)
For visitors to TheGardenCoop.com, I’ve arranged a discount from Portland’s own Timber Pro UV on their non-toxic wood treatments and stains.
In particular, their Internal Wood Stabilizer product is ideally suited for chicken coops like The Garden Coop and The Garden Ark, safely protecting exposed exterior softwoods from rot and moisture damage in a way that stain or paint alone cannot.
Learn more and get the Timber Pro UV discount code here.
Brad’s Garden Coop build shows off a real attention to detail, especially on the siding around the hen house. It’s got a great color scheme — the green tone contrasting nicely with the natural cedar. Most importantly, it looks like Brad and his family had a lot of fun with the project. The rest of this post and photos come from him. . . (more…)
Merri-Lynn sent in this picture of her Garden Coop build in Tennessee. She worked on it with her daughter, who, as a big Hannah Montana fan, insisted on a bright color scheme. Merri-Lynn wrote:
We couldn’t be more proud of the way it turned out. It took a number of weekends to complete as we had to wait for additional hands for a few of the steps, but for the most part we completed it ourselves. The directions were easy to follow, and I would recommend that anyone can take on this project. Our chickens love their new home — color and all!
Thanks to Merri-Lynn for her picture and comments. If you like what you see, let her know with a reply below. And tell us, what colors are your chicken coop?
Whether you’re building The Garden Coop, The Garden Ark, or pretty much any other chicken coop, the instructions that follow will show you in detail how to add external nesting boxes to your coop.
First, a little background. I designed The Garden Coop and The Garden Ark to make efficient use of space, be easy to build, and to have everything under one roof — including the nesting boxes. Personally, I prefer the simplicity of having the boxes in the henhouse, and it has worked well for us and many others for years.
So if you’re new to chicken keeping or coop building, please do not feel as though you have to add exterior nest boxes to your coop.
That said, there’s something about external nesting boxes that just captures the fancy of backyard chicken keepers. . . . (more…)
“I have never had so much fun totally ignoring my children.” So begins Cheris’s blog post about building her own chicken coop with The Garden Ark mobile chicken coop plans. Of course, once your coop is built, it’s often the kids that will enjoy it most. . .
Lila K. and her husband live on the Gulf Coastal Plain of Texas. This is their chicken coop, built using The Garden Coop chicken coop design plans. It’s remarkable, not only for what you can see, but also for what you can’t. At least, not unless you’re looking for it.
The Garden Coop chicken coop design plan calls for a pier-on-grade foundation that works well just about anywhere. But if you need to adapt the design to suit local building codes or seasonal weather events, it’s quite flexible. Lila chose to modify the design by setting 4×4 posts at each corner of the coop and securing the frame to those.
Her primary reason for adapting the design was to give even more stability to their chicken coop, anchoring it firmly should it be buffeted by treacherous Gulf Coast weather. Aesthetically, Lila also liked the beefier look the posts gave to the frame.
She paid great attention to other details as well. She added a small window on the front, and she painted the trim, door stops, and roof structure a light green color that stands out against the natural wood tone of the frame. By doing this, she created really nice outlines that give her chicken coop a smart, finished look.
When Portland designer, filmmaker, and photographer Lubosh Cech was ready to build his own chicken coop, he wanted it to be a work of art. The Garden Coop chicken coop plans turned out to be the perfect place to start. Lubosh told us recently about the modifications he made to the design and how he gave his backyard coop an artful, personal touch:
Thank you for the plans! This was a fun project, and it successfully distracted me from my work for most of the month.
Because of the space limitations, I had to shorten the design and push the structure all the way to the corner of the yard. In addition to buying new lumber, I reused wood and other materials that cluttered my basement shop. Half of the paint I used is 100% recycled latex from Metro.
To make the structure more fun, I painted the Buddha on the front panel of the henhouse and decorated the roof with the Tibetan prayer flags. The Buddha is holding a golden egg over the nesting box access door.
Coincidentally, my three chicks moved in on July 6th, the Dalai Lama’s 75th birthday!
Here are a few more pictures of the Hen Temple. (more…)
A glimpse of the painted hen house floor of The Garden Ark chicken coop, B.C. (before chickens).
You know you need to protect your chicken coop from the elements outside. Wind and sun, rain and snow take their toll on your poultry pen over time, and a good wood sealer or exterior paint on the outside of the hen house goes a long way toward preventing this damage.
But what about protection from the “elements” inside the henhouse? Face it, a lot more comes out of a hen’s vent than just fresh eggs. And depending on the design of your henhouse — whether you have a special poop tray, a slotted floor, or a bare floor covered in bedding — you have to consider whether you want to paint the hen house walls and floor to make cleaning up their droppings easier. Listen in and/or read on for our thoughts. . .
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The Garden Coop and Garden Ark chicken coop plans call for a simple henhouse floor. That is, there’s no poop tray or slotted floor in these designs, though you could certainly add them. What you have, then, is a basic plywood or oriented strand board (OSB) floor. Both of these are bare wood products, which means that if they get wet, they will begin to absorb moisture.
+ Read more about the henhouse design in The Garden Coop and The Garden Ark chicken coop plans.
+ Read more about choosing the right kind of sheet wood for a chicken coop.
Painting the floor will protect it from moisture and everything that can come with it — rot, mold, mildew. Even just the swollen and raised fibers of the wood can make brushing out debris go less smoothly. Seal the surface well, and any soiled bedding should brush right out.
That said, painting the henhouse floor is not a must. Your choice may come down to cost. If you have the right paint handy, by all means use it. But if you’re trying to save on the cost of building a chicken coop, a quart or gallon of quality paint may cost more than the piece of wood you’re trying to protect.
Whether you decide to paint or not, what is a must is that you maintain a layer of carbonaceous bedding (straw, pine shavings, shredded paper, dried leaves, etc.) to collect the chickens’ droppings. This is important for both absorbing moisture and keeping odors down. As the chicken manure collects in the bedding, the mixture of the two is a lot easier to remove and add to the compost.
We have a coop in which we painted the floor and another in which we left the hen house floor unfinished. We keep a layer of fresh bedding in both, and since the hens’ droppings fall onto this bedding, the moisture doesn’t readily soak into the plywood. (A bit of chicken trivia, not that you asked for it: A chicken’s urine comes out the vent with its feces. It’s the whitish stuff mixed in with the droppings.)
Here are a couple pictures of those hen house floors. The first is of the unfinished floor. The second is of the painted one.
The hen house floor of this Garden Ark mobile chicken coop is painted with white exterior latex paint. I've brushed back the bedding to show the floor. Notice it looks about the same as the unfinished henhouse floor pictured above. But I could wipe this one down to its original pristine condition (if I ever wanted to.) The smoothness of the painted floor does make it a little easier to sweep out the soiled bedding.
Now, while the floors in both these coops are holding up quite well, we do find that the painted floor is easier to clean. It’s definitely easier to tell when it’s clean, and my guess is that the painted surface will outlast the unpainted one.
To paint the floor of your chicken coop, simply apply two coats (or more) of a durable exterior latex paint. The coop should be so well ventilated that any gradual off-gassing from your paint won’t harm the chickens, but you may still prefer to use a low-VOC (volatile organic compound) paint, especially if you’re painting the floor piece indoors. If you have a primer, applying that first will improve the adhesion and coverage of the paint.
Hens like to go barefoot and rarely trim their nails, so plan to use a paint that’s tough enough to hold up to the constant scratching. As for color, white or a pale shade is best, as it will make it more obvious when the chicken coop floor needs to be cleaned.
Since the interior walls don’t get soiled like the floor, we’ve left them bare on all of our family’s coops. But if you have the paint or a durable flooring material like vinyl or linoleum and the time, you might cover them anyway just to brighten things up.
Let us know what has worked for you. Did you paint your henhouse floor or not? Any particular paints or sealers work well on your chicken coop floor? Leave your comment below!
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