How to Cure: How to Make a Chicken Coop out of a Couch

How to build a Chicken Coop for 8 to 12 comfy chickens.

Needed:

1 Old Couch
Old wood pallets
Old cans paint
Scrap Wood
Couple neighborhood kids to paint
Purchase or Find: Hinges (door), Latches, nails, chicken wire

TOTAL COST: $100 to $120 (most cost is in the chicken wire)

You Need the chicken wire to protect the chicks. Dogs, raccoons, skunks, cats, etc loooove to eat chickens.

So you want eggs, eh? For free did you say? You want yokes with deep orange hues, filled with nutrition and soul from the live bugs and grasses your chickens will feed on from your own backyard?

Awesome!! You can do it!! and it's easy!!

Just remember there's a learning curve. We started with 18 and ended with 2 the first time we did this, so there is much learning (and crying) that can happen to get your sustainable investment off-the-ground. It'll teach you a lot about responsibility and caring for others and they give and give and give back to you each day.

It's very rewarding.

The design we chose was a design where it was ig enough to keep our chickens in for a few days without letting them out, for those monthly times we head outta town for a couple days.

So our coop is large for the amount of chicks we have, yet it is an awesome investment into our backyard. It took about a week of building, so factor this in mind.

I collected most parts from nearby neighbors and jobs I had done in the past, along with Freecycle and Craigs List Free Listings.

First I started with demolishing an old 2-seater love-seat couch. Shredded the padding off it and made it bare-bones.

Next I found a place in the backyard that made sense to put this chicken hotel. Not too much sun, not too much shade, where noise would be ok (if we ended up with a rooster), accessible for the kids to go out and feed them...

And I started lining up wood pallets side by side nailing them to the couch, which I lifted off the ground with some larger boards & bricks, for safety of the chicks laying eggs. A simple build, I found scrap wood from various neighbors..

I designed it to fit with 2 rolls of chicken wire, so they'd overlay a few inches over each 3 or 4' wide roll I found at Home Depot. I used the metal kind and the plastic kind.

The wooden support 2X4's I laid into the ground about 2 feet without cement. Straight in. It's solid and i can swing from the 2 support beams without the system moving.

Then came finding a couple kids and bribing them with candy to paint everything. Beware. paint will get everywhere...

Then the front door and the netting... This took some time to get right, but piece-by-piece without any design worked best for us. I'm not the kind guy who prices it all out with perfect design before beginning. I like to do a little at a time, finding what i need as i go alone. So it took about a week to finish, and it took long days.

Add some chickens and a family and... viola... eggs start coming daily. Usually 1 egg per bird per day. This couch, we built 4 compartments for laying with an expansion for 2 other slots, and 2 doors on the back of the couch with hinges where we can get eggs from without entering the Hotel if need be.