The perfect chicken coop
When I asked Mark
what he wished he'd known about chickens when we first got
started, his immediate answer was: "I wish I'd realized coops need
to be big and accessible." He detests our current coops and
is looking forward to getting back to work on our Starplate
coop in the
near future.
I'm not as judgmental
about Mark's early coops as he is --- when you ask your husband to
build a chicken coop for $10 or less, any serviceable result
counts as a success in my book. But I agree that it's much
easier on the chicken owner if a wheelbarrow will fit through the
door, if you don't hit your head inside, and if nest boxes open to
the outside so you don't even have to enter during daily egg
runs. All of these factors are really for the farmer,
though, since I've noticed that chickens are mostly interested in
quality of the roosts, safety from predators, and how quickly they
can get outside to hunt down bugs.
You
can read my wish list for the perfect coop here, and we'll keep you
posted as we finish up version 3.0 this fall. In the
meantime, I'd love to hear your take on the perfect chicken coop,
either in the comments or as an entry in our chicken
contest.
Is there a design feature I've missed?
| This
post is part of our "I
wish I'd known" lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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