All Cooped Up
When you go to school for architecture and someone in your family needs to build something, you get drafted to do it for them. This summer my mother decided that she would like to have fresh eggs, which means chickens, which means a chicken coop. Thus began the Coop Charette wherein I designed and built (with help) a chicken coop for six chickens during a long weekend. I don't even like eggs!
The coop is comprised of three main elements: a steel and stone monolith which casts a solid shadow and acts as a dead weight, the actual houses which sit on a ramp, and a wood-slatted roosting platform which acts as a shade for the houses below.
We welded the monolith out of steel in a shop and trucked it to the site. It's buried 18 inches in the ground which, when you're digging in rock-hard California soil, is not a fun hole to dig. In this picture you see the monolith hollow before it was filled with 1.1 tons of gravel. The wooden roost slats sit in a steel tray that is tied with cables to the monolith.
Hens like to have a place to roost that is separate from their nest and usually elevated off the ground a bit. The slats along the top provide ample opportunity for roosting. In this picture the slats are still being added so you see a small gap where the shade is joined to the monolith. Here you can also see some of the houses laid in.
What surprised me most about this project is where the problems came from. Although I expected some technical/mechanical issues there really weren't any. The biggest problems came when trying to acquire materials. The people at the sheet metal shop didn't understand why I wanted 14" duct work for a chicken coop. The gravel & sand lady told me I was buying the wrong rocks. Everyone has their own ideas about what a chicken coop should be and it's certainly not this. However, once I explained the project and endured a few odd glances I generally found that the salespeople I encountered would become very interested in the project. Always get buy-in first.
Completed coop with Rhode Island Reds roaming around
--Posted 09/16/04 12:01AM