She Built a Chicken Coop and Was Surprised by What Happened Next
A Southern California homeowner and animal lover shares her building tips and advice on raising happy backyard hens
Michelle Chun took about six months to build the chicken coop in the backyard of her and her husband’s home in Alhambra, California. Chun, a consultant in the health-care industry, spent just a few hours each weekend on the project, squeezing it in between her work and other activities, which include raising guide dogs and caring for her horse. She modified a plan from the book Building Chicken Coops for Dummies to make the coop taller, and she adjusted other details to accommodate the structure as she built it against her garage wall. Because she’s comfortable with power tools, she says she’d rate the difficulty of building the coop as a 5 on a scale of 10.
Today, the coop houses Chun’s four hens: an Easter Egger (“a chicken mutt with the blue egg gene”), a Salmon Faverolles, a blue Ameraucana and a cross between a Cream Legbar and a Welsummer. “I have eggs that are pink, brown with speckles, blue and blue-green…. It’s an instant Easter egg basket,” Chun says. She got most of the hens as chicks from My Pet Chicken.
Bloom, left, Mist and Lola root around the raised beds next to the coop and have year-round access to the rest of the yard. “My chickens get free range of the yard as soon as the pop door opens,” she says. The only time she keeps them in the run area is for safety when work is being done on the house — or when chicken-unfriendly dogs come to visit.
The human-size door was built for Chun to access the chicken run for cleaning. It’s left open all day. For the roof, she used plywood sheathing, 30-pound roofing paper and asphalt tiles that her sister had left over after redoing her roof.
Tip: “If you have doors [on your coop], make sure you build yourself a way to open the lock from the inside,” Chun says. “Ask me how I know.”
Tip: “If you have doors [on your coop], make sure you build yourself a way to open the lock from the inside,” Chun says. “Ask me how I know.”
Chun calls the automatic hutch door she installed “the single best investment on the coop,” since it doesn’t have to be manually opened and closed. With the old manual door, “we used to rush home to shut them in and then wake up early to let them out.” Here, Parker makes her way up the ramp, through the door and into the hutch.
The solar-powered door from AdorStore opens when the sun comes out and closes when it gets dark, and there’s an emergency “last call” feature for chickens running late.
Chun trained her hens when they were young to recognize their coop as home, so every night before it gets dark, they all return to roost in the coop. When they were old enough, she moved them into the coop and kept them there for a week so they became used to the coop. After that she let them range, and by then they recognized that the coop was their home, and they returned to it on their own.
“I don’t have to encourage them or round them up at night,” she says.
Chun trained her hens when they were young to recognize their coop as home, so every night before it gets dark, they all return to roost in the coop. When they were old enough, she moved them into the coop and kept them there for a week so they became used to the coop. After that she let them range, and by then they recognized that the coop was their home, and they returned to it on their own.
“I don’t have to encourage them or round them up at night,” she says.
Next to the door, a watering system from The Chicken Fountain is hooked up to a hose that’s always turned on slightly.
The hens get water by pecking at nipples in the system’s PVC tubing.
The nest box lid opens for easy access to eggs, and a latch Chun installed keeps out curious critters. Chun says she selected her current brood of hens “for their looks, the color of their eggs, good personality and their reliability in laying.” They lay eggs nearly every day.
The nest box has a plastic pad and liner, which makes cleanup easy when an egg breaks. “The mess is kept off the floor of the nest box, and I just need to wash the liner and pad. The pad also keeps the eggs much cleaner when they are laid, and the hens seem to like them, as they provide a nice texture to sit on,” Chun says.
Several windows provide ventilation. “You don’t want drafts, but you do want good ventilation,” Chun says. She used half-inch hardware cloth for the window opening. She keeps the hinged wood-frame acrylic window open during the day and latched shut on cold nights.
Since chickens like it dark when they lay eggs, Chun put curtains over the nest box. She doesn’t use anything organic in the nest box, which discourages mites and helps to prevent mold. The henhouse floor is lined with Sweet PDZ, a type of odor-controlling zeolite mineral used for bedding in coops and horse stalls. She used coarse sand for the floor of the run, hauling the half-ton pile she got at Lowe’s one wheelbarrow at a time.
Chun provides her hens GMO-, soy- and corn-free feed from Scratch and Peck, and she offers them free-choice feeding from a couple of feeders. They also get free range of the fenced-in yard, “as soon as the pop door opens.”
She also provides a bowl of crushed oyster shells inside the coop. The shells are essential for laying hens because they provide additional calcium. “While their food already contains calcium, some hens need more, and you should always provide it free choice, as those that need it will eat more to help with shell formation,” she says.
She also provides a bowl of crushed oyster shells inside the coop. The shells are essential for laying hens because they provide additional calcium. “While their food already contains calcium, some hens need more, and you should always provide it free choice, as those that need it will eat more to help with shell formation,” she says.
A previous store-bought coop proved to be too small for her four hens, but it remains in the yard, just on the other side of the fence from the DIY coop. The birds visit it on their daily explorations.
Lola pecks at the back of the yard under a tree with baskets of baby orchids raised by Chun’s husband, Vince Wong.
Chun, pictured here with Mister, a guide dog puppy in training, says she didn’t realize she’d enjoy her hens as much as she does. “They run to me and share their chatter with me as they look to see if I’ve brought them some kind of treat. I find myself often sitting outside just watching them scratching around the yard. We have beautiful, fresh eggs that we know come from happy hens. I can’t ask for much more than that.”
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Coop at a Glance
Who built it: Michelle Chun
Location: Alhambra, California
Size: 4 feet wide by 8 feet long and 7½ feet tall (1.2 meters wide by 2.4 meters long by 2.3 meters tall)
Materials: The coop is constructed of two-by-two wood boards, pressure-treated two-by-fours (for any areas that touch the ground) and T1-11 siding for the hutch and nest boxes. Chun’s brother contributed the weather vane; it’s the only rooster on the property, as they’re banned in her community.