Upcycled Chicken Coup

Full disclosure, I have no background in construction (other than a few odd jobs I did with my father) and that should be apparent. What I created was not drawn up or rendered before hand in any responsible way, and this approach was only taken given that this is my property and I was trying to use what I had around me (given I am a teacher with a teacher’s salary…). To be honest, the whole project was really a very challenging critical thinking exercise that I managed on the fly.

Below, you can see everything I had to begin. This coup was nearly free to me since I utilized a pile of old pallets, some wood my school was throwing away, and a section of a rusty metal roof. The metal roof came from another old livestock shelter that I pulled down on the property. The roof on that structure had already failed and this was just one of the pieces that I was able to salvage. These pieces were difficult to fit together and then my power tools died on me, as well as my solar charging battery, so I used my trusty wood saw (from my grandfather-in-law Eddie Mezeul - an incredibly hard working WWII veteran that provided me with many neat tools). The hillside has been difficult to deal with but I’ve got the structure mostly level, which seems to be fine for the 8 happy chickens currently living in there. The only items I spent money on were the screws, exterior paint, zipties, and chicken wire. The entire set up cost me approximately $100 dollars and lots of physical labor, but I am happy that my family will have plenty of fresh organic eggs for years to come.

Hilariously, I thought I’d be able to move the structure after I’d built it in the wrong location. As soon as my friend and I tried to lift it, the thing literally would not budge. After about an hour of trying idea after idea, we managed to at least turn the coup before constructing a fenced in run that wouldn’t block the yard.