Erica’s Northwest Chicken Coop Built Using The Garden Coop Plans
Gardener, suburban homesteader, chef, and author of the blog Northwest Edible Life, Erica S. is also the proud keeper of a flock of backyard chickens. And the chicken coop she built to house them (based on The Garden Coop walk-in chicken coop plans) has become a key part of her food garden.
Erica sent a note about her chicken coop/modifications as well as links to some great posts on her ongoing experimentation — both with the coop in particular and with sustainable suburban living in general:
Just wanted to let you know we bought your Garden Coop walk-in chicken coop plans last year and based our coop off of them. We love the look and functionality. Thanks for the excellent design.
The biggest changes we made are: the size (slightly larger at 12′ x 8′), running the ramp up the side entrance of the hen house, fully looping hardware mesh under the coop, and the way we attached the mesh on the roof. . .
We made framed panels of mesh and attached these to the roof joists with screws. I think this way of doing it, rather than all that stapling overhead, streamlined things quite a bit, and the extra materials cost was trivial.
Of course, we’ve been making periodic improvements as we’ve gone along (next up: chicken nipple waterer!). You can see what we’ve done here, here, and here.
Thanks again for the great plans!
Many thanks to Erica for sharing her tips and photo. Like what she’s done? Leave a comment here or on her blog. And be sure to check out Northwest Edible Life for even more inspiring ideas.
2 thoughts on “Erica’s Northwest Chicken Coop Built Using The Garden Coop Plans”
Phaedra, I like the idea of attaching the wire to each section, but I’m concerned about predator proofing, how did you guys address that? Thanks.
I am a follower of Erica’s great blog. Thanks to her suggestion, we also used frames to attach the hardware cloth to and then attached the frames into the roof. This also allows us easy access to the roofing panels from below in case we need to do any maintenance on the roof.
Also, instead of wrapping the hardware cloth around the frame, we just cut pieces and attached each section. This really allowed us to really line up the hardware cloth onto the frame very well.
But I gotta say….the hydrolic lift for the inner coop door is genius!
Thanks to The Garden Coop and Erica for the wonderful inspiration and ideas. We LOVE our coop and can’t wait to get the chicks now! I’ll send photos soon.
Phaedra