Marc’s California Chicken Coop Built Using The Garden Coop Plans
Marc in Los Altos, California, built this great-looking chicken coop using The Garden Coop walk-in coop plans. He added some nice touches and sent a lot of pictures to illustrate what he’s built. The rest of the post comes from him. . . .
Our Garden Coop chicken coop build
Here are some pictures of our coop. Things to note:
- I narrowed the door width to 2-1/2 feet so the coop would fit within our space.
- I tacked the hardware cloth on the inside of the coop rather than outside. My wife liked the look better. The only downside is that it’s a bit tricky to attach roosting dowels on the inside.
- For the siding of the hen house I used leftover tongue & groove boards that we had used on our house.
- We purchased the windows from www.shed-windows.com. The mullions are removable and I plan to remove them from the inside windows.
- On the inside I added big double doors. This really helps for cleaning and I suspect when the weather gets warmer we’ll leave them open.
- You can’t see it in the picture but we placed linoleum on the floor of the henhouse as a liner.
- You’ll notice I added a slight lip to the “escape hatch” in the floor to prevent the shavings from falling through.
- I still need to add some roosting bars in the henhouse.
- The ramp is hinged so we can pull the drawstring to raise it. This doubles as a door if we want to keep the hens in the henhouse.
- We took your advice by using real branches for the ramp. Nice touch!
- The look of the henhouse in style and color actually matches that of our garage which is located about 20 feet away (it’s not in the picture).
- We noticed that when it rains the water drops off the back and splashes into the coop. I don’t have a photo yet but I recently cut a 2″ diameter PVC pipe down the middle and I’m making a simple gutter out of it. Works great!
That about covers it. Thanks again for the great plans. My wife LOVES the coop, and our friends are both impressed and envious. I really enjoyed building it, and it has inspired me to build more things.
More photos of Marc’s Garden Coop chicken coop
Thanks to Marc for sharing his coop pictures and notes! If you like what he’s done, please let him know with a comment below.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Topics
Other posts you might like...
Neiley’s Maine Chicken Coop with Flower Box
December 10, 2013
Keeping your New Year’s resolution to keep chickens
December 30, 2013
Karen’s Connecticut Chicken Coops from Plans
January 10, 2012
Quail in the house! Stephanie’s North Carolina Garden Coop
October 13, 2010
NEW: Chick Brooder Cages
March 6, 2013
Still chickenless? 5 ways to shift from stuck to cluck
September 29, 2010
9 thoughts on “Marc’s California Chicken Coop Built Using The Garden Coop Plans”
Hi! Love your coop! We have a similar design (coop above, run underneath)…and same ramp under the coop. We have three 3 month old chickens and have only had them for a week and a half. They do not like to go down the ramp, have only seen 1 bird do it one time! They go up the ramp into the coop no problem. Did you have any troubles with this? Or tips? Thanks so much!
Darci, a few ideas: Make sure the food and water is in the lower part of the coop, so they have to go down the ramp to get it. Lure them down by placing a trail of food on the ladder. If there’s an alpha, set her halfway down the ladder, and lure her down the rest of the way — once she’s got it, the others will follow suit. Attach hardware cloth to the ramp for a less slick surface and/or increase the number of rungs. Open the cleanout door (if it opens into the run) so they can bypass the ladder by just jumping/flying down. Hope this helps!
Hi I was wondering if you could tell me how wide is your ramp and the size of the whole above it please
Natasha, here are the chicken coop plans Marc used for this coop.
I am interested in your gutter. I was thinking of doing the same thing – slicing a tube and fitting it over the edge of the roofing. I was not sure how to attach it, though. How did you do it?
I notice you have a bale of wheat straw inside the coop. I’m wondering if the chicks help spread the straw from the bale or do you do that for them. I’ve just used pine flake, but the wheat straw sounds tempting.
I think you should feature MY Garden Coop sometime ;-] It is made of salvaged materials, including 80-year old wood, drawing boards from an art class that last met in 1964, hardware from a 100 year-old fishing cabin in Maine, stained glass and original art commissioned from an 8 year old local artist!
Sounds fantastic, Kristen! Email me some pictures and notes. Or if you’re on Facebook, you can post pics right to our page.
Your coop looks great! I only have one comment and that was the decision to narrow the door going into the coop. I depend on the wider width so that the wheel barrow fits through the door easily. This allows me to brush out the soiled shavings in the chicken house into the wheel barrow to transfer to the compost pile.