Urban Homesteading: Design and Build a Chicken Coop

On the long drive from Seattle to Minneapolis, my husband Jeremy and I talked about plans for the future–gardening, decorating our new apartment, and getting chickens. There was a brief thought of rushing blindly into getting chickens, but we decided to do our research first. We took a class called Chickens 101 and visited a coop in town. That fall we also went touring on the semi-annual Parade of Chicken Coops that happens here in Minneapolis. We asked chicken owners every question we could think of about breeds, food, care of chickens, and coop building.

We did months of research and planning for our chicken coop before we started building it. There were a lot of details to consider: how many chickens did we want, how much space did they need, how many next boxes, how much roosting space, would there be a run or not, how could we make this accessible for people too, how could we keep out predators, how would we keep the chickens warm during the winter and where would food and water go?

You can really go a bit crazy with the details. We learned that chickens need a minimum of four square feet per bird if they have access to a run and 10 square feet per bird if they don’t have a run. You need one nest box for every four chickens. And the rest of it is personal preference. I don’t think I’ve seen two chicken coops–unless they were pre-fabricated–that looked the same.

We initially hoped to have our coop built by the end of the summer, but it took until December to agree with our landlords on where to put it. So Jeremy started constructing the coop in the middle of January after it had warmed up to about 20 degrees. He had to pour tons of boiling water on the ground before he could get a shovel in. The first step with our coop was putting down six concrete piers for the 4×4s to set in. The 4×4s were the main supports for the whole coop. Once those were up things seemed to move along quickly. In the end, with one distraction or another, I think it took about three months to build the coop. And technically, we’re still working on it! Like any good house project.

Our coop has a henhouse and a run and the entire thing is covered with a shingled roof. This keeps out the rain and snow for the most part so the girls can dust bathe and peck at things all year long. The hen house is raised two feet off the ground and the girls generally get in and out through a hole in the floor. The whole front of the hen house opens up with double doors which make it easier for us to clean up, change water, add food, etc.

We have three nest boxes with removable trays that make it easy to clean out the nest boxes. We can access the nest boxes from little hinged doors on the outside of the coop. We put in a big window on the south side for added light and it also lets us see what the girls are up to. We put in a heat lamp on a thermostat and a regular light on a timer. During the short winter days the light supplements daylight hours so the girls get enough light to lay eggs.

Chickens need about 12-13 hours of light in order to lay eggs. The heat lamp is triggered to turn on if it gets below 30 degrees inside the hen house–probably not something you’ll need too often in the Northwest. We keep their food and water inside the hen house right under the nest boxes. If you have feeding containers out in the open, chickens will roost on them, sit on them, poop on them, and tip them over. They’re so messy. We put a Dutch door into the run so we could open the door and toss in kitchen scraps without letting the girls escape.

We had a change in plans recently in that we had to move our chicken coop one block down the street to our new house, but luckily it was built very well and withstood the trip with flying colors.

Given how many people in the city are a bit skeptical about or downright opposed to chickens, we feel it’s important that chicken coops look a bit nicer than what you find in the country. So that explains why some people refer to our coop as a chicken mansion.

The chicken mansion was ready and the chickens were soon to follow…

About the author: Aimee McAdams grew up in the Northwest and now lives in the fair city of Minneapolis. From building raised beds and root cellars to keeping chickens and making preserves, Aimee and her husband Jeremy are experimenting with all things urban agriculture. She writes the blog Adventures in Urban Homesteading. Contact her at aimee.mcadams@yahoo.com.

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