Chicken Coop Reveal

I know. I know.  I've only been promising this post since like July.  Well, here it is.  I finally sat down to edit these picture, so I'm proud to present our chicken coop reveal!

When I decided that I wanted chickens, I knew that I wanted a cute coop.  My husband promptly told me that he WAS NOT building me a "Pinterest-worthy" coop.  I'm not sure if he realizes this or not, but I think that this is TOTALLY a "Pinterest-worthy" coop!  I'm so in love with it.  Sometimes I just stare at it after I feed the chickens.

Now, we don't have plans to share or a total dollar amount for our coop yet.  I really don't want to know how much we spent on it.  I CAN tell you that buying a pre-fab building and converting it would probably be simpler and just as cheap.

Ok, on to the tour!

The brick pad in front of the door there is actually made of bricks that were just in a pile on the farm.  Most of our other supplies we tried to buy at the local lumber and hardware stores, but even then, trips to Menards were plentiful.

I wanted the chickens to be near the bees when we let them out to forage because chickens help eat other bugs that may invade the hive.  However, I didn't anticipate the chickens wanting to spend more time in the woods because of the shade and protection from predatory birds.  We've added blueberry bushes near the hive so hopefully that will when they grow a bit they provide the chickens with more cover to spend more time by the hive.

I love having the nesting boxes open to the outside so we don't have to go into the coop to gather eggs.  I put pine shavings in the boxes and so far our eggs have been super clean.  Also, I put golf balls in all of the boxes before the hens started laying to encourage them to lay in all of the boxes.  This seems to have worked because we've had eggs in all of the boxes.

Both of my signs are from Bainbridge Mercantile.  They have the cutest farm signs!

My husband made the door to the run out of 2x4's.  We plan to let grass grow over the gravel, but having the gravel will hopefully prevent standing water from gathering around the coop.

One day while my husband was on travel, I came out to see raccoon paw prints all the way at the top of the side of our coop!  So, even though the space up there (which we have for ventilation) is only about two inches, we added the wire mesh to prevent predators from entering.

Inside we have the roosting steps.  We have 12 hens and two roosters and they all fit on the top two bars.  We also use the hanging feeder and waterer to keep shavings and rocks out of them both.  When you build your coop, you do want to make sure that you keep your nesting boxes higher than the bottom rung of your roosting ladder.

Well, that's it!  Thanks for stopping by!