Mary’s Split-Level Chicken Coop, Laguna Beach, California

The foundation of The Garden Coop walk-in chicken coop design allows you to easily accommodate a slight slope when building your chicken coop. But what do you do when your site has a much steeper grade?

Split it up! At least, that’s what Mary did with her chicken coop project in Laguna Beach, California, tucking a beautiful split-level, narrow Garden Coop into a sloped strip right next to her driveway. The rest of this post comes directly from her. . . 

Modifying the chicken coop to build on a steep slope

I bought your Garden Coop chicken coop plans a while back knowing that I would need to modify the plans to suit our non-level lot. The only available space required a 12′ x 4′ split-level design.

The actual building of the coop was easy, it was the site prep that took the bulk of my effort. I had to move massive amounts of dirt to create a level surface. Also, fearing rodents, raccoons, and coyotes, I dug out an extra foot so that I could put down wire cloth underneath the floor of the coop to ensure that my coop was burrow resistant.

Our chicken coop is the hit of the neighborhood

I’m so happy with the results, and proud of my work. Thank you for the awesome design — the coop is the hit of our neighborhood. It took me a while, as I’m a high school teacher so I had to fit in the work in where I could, but I enjoyed every step of the process. Thank you!

Many thanks to Mary for taking The Garden Coop walk-in chicken coop design to a whole new level ;). Inspired by her example, I’ll be helping a friend with a similar split-level build later this year. If you like what Mary has done or have any tips on building a coop or keeping chickens on sloped ground, please leave a comment below.