Chicken Coop
This is by far the best chicken coop I have had. For the last 14 years, we have enjoyed our chickens. There have been many different coops because of many moves. We also brought the chickens with us. I would say I have been a part of brainstorming a lot of different chicken coops in my day. This chicken coop that we have now is the first one I can go inside the outside area and really enjoy spending time with them and I do believe this is the perfect way to keep all of my chickens safe and sound.
UPDATE: Going on over 3 years with this style of coop and still love it. Yearly wire checks keep the chickens safe.
Coyotes even tried digging in but no luck.
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If you have read my post on Simple DIY Chicken Coops you are familiar with how many unusual chicken coops we have made. This time we have come up with the best option for our chickens to keep them enclosed but enough room to roam for their liking and their safety. We are able to put all of our roosters together with this chicken coop something we have never done before. I think that is awesome! So much less work for me to do.
The Best Chicken Coop
What we chose for our coop is a Large Metal Chicken Enclosure. Actually, this part is for the run area. The one we bought is 12.5 feet long by 9.5 feet wide and 6 feet tall. It is so nice just to be able to walk in and spend time with my hens and roosters. We bought two of these one to house our roosters and the other for our hens.
Assembly Time
This enclosure was so easy to put together that it only took 2 of us. All we had to do was click the posts together to assemble it. Then they provided the chicken wire to enclose it and a roll of wire to tie the chicken wire to the poles.
The chicken wire does come in a large roll and you will have to cut it to size for each side. This part is what took the longest. I made sure that there weren’t any gaps for predators to get in. My husband gets kind of annoyed at me for this. I kind of go a little too far but I figure better safe than sorry. There was enough chicken wire to have some leftovers that we are holding on to just in case something needs to be patched.
We did start using these plastic ties to hold the chicken wire onto it. I would suggest using the plastic ties at the beginning to quickly tie the mesh to poles then go back with the wire to secure it more. So far the plastic ties are holding up here in the Arizona sun but I like the security of the wire also. (Once again me being cautious) Rodents and other animals can’t chew through the wire as much. (FYI end of summer now plastic ties are popping off. Sure glad I used the wire also.)
You can do this in one day if you stick with it. We did it in two because of a lot of breaks. All in all, I am very pleased with this chicken coop enclosure.
Shelter in the Chicken Coop
There are numerous ways you can put shelter in these chicken runs. They are definitely spacious enough. What we have done is built a large rectangular box out of 2x3s and plywood. We put a divider in the middle and a door on each side. One side is for the hens and the other is for the roosters. As I said earlier we bought two of the enclosures. So we sandwiched this chicken coop box between the two enclosures and cut the chicken wire out so the doors could open on both sides. Then we stapled the chicken wire to the plywood so nothing can get in. Hopefully, that makes sense if not the picture below should help explain it.
Notice the extra hutches in the enclosure area. There are two different types. The triangle ones are great for a single chicken two at most. They are actually rabbit hutches but are great for a few chickens. We bought these when we moved here to house all of the chickens in the garage while we figured out what we wanted to do. They have held up so well we use them as a place to separate a hurt chicken or even when it’s hot outside we keep them in these hutches to have more air circulation.
Notice the space we still have in the enclosure area even with the extra hutches inside.
More Predator Proofing
The enclosure itself is great to keep the predators out but digging under the enclosure could be a problem. What we have done is purchased these digging barriers. They are large panels of stakes that go into the ground. they are made to keep dogs from digging out of yards. I had read many great reviews about how it was hard for others to keep their dogs from digging under fences but once they installed these they were unable to. So we thought these would be great to keep predators out of our chicken coops. Even the coyotes that are around our area.
They work great nothing has dug under. The extra bonus is it helps hold down the enclosure. We threaded the stakes through the chicken wire as we hammered them into the ground. It helped secure everything together. We bought enough to go around both of the enclosures. The only problem we had was we live in the desert and there are a lot of rocks underground so we had to dig some out before they would go all the way in. But it definitely was worth it. I have no worries if I am late putting my chickens up for the night.
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Best Ever For Sure
If we were to ever move this is what we would do again. It would be easy enough to take apart and move it with us.
I have enjoyed being able to spend time with all of my chickens. Hopefully, this helped you decide which way you are going with your chicken coop.
It’s going on eleven months using this and I have no complaints whatsoever.
Summer Update
The chicken coop is holding up great. But here in sunny and hot Arizona, we needed to add more shade. What we have done is buy large tarps to go over the whole top of the coop to block the sun. This did provide enough shade for all of the chickens.
They stopped the sun from beating down on them but the outside temperature was getting up past 115 degrees for most of July and August. Way too hot for them. After some looking around for more cooling ideas we decided to give a misting system a try. Boy did they ever work. According to our thermometer, it reduced the temperature by 15 degrees.
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