The Chicken Coop Part 1: Design and Ordering Materials

Step 1: Pick a spot and footprint. The two main goals were 1) to find a place adequately exposed to the sun.  That meant that it had to relatively sheltered from direct sun and heat so the chickens wouldn't get roasted but still have enough sun to provide heat in the winter and light for egg production.  

Testing out several spots in the yard with big cardboard boxes to give us a sense of scale and space. 

Step 2: Design the coop. We didn't find any pre-made plans that would fit our needs, so Dan used an open source CAD program to plan out the coop.  Luckily he's a very talented man - this is certainly not something I'd be able to do. 

The goal

Step 3: Order materials. We don't have a big vehicle, so we needed to get all our materials delivered.  This meant that we needed to know every piece of lumber, wooden paneling, chicken wire and sheet metal we would need ahead of time - and that we couldn't make many mistakes.After an intense round of planning, counting, calculating, and ordering, this is what we started with. Our car had to live without its garage for a while.