Category: Chicken coops

Our first chicken coop

February 23, 2018 Chicken coops No Comments

When we first started with chickens we built three chicken tractors to handle 20 hens our neighbor gifted to us in exchange for some fresh eggs.

 

After a couple years we decided to raise a flock of mail order chicks to replace those hard working hens and built this rough chicken coop.

 

We had a very limited budget and wanted to use as much recycled materials as we could and ended up making a very poor chicken coop.

 

It was big enough for chickens but I failed to make it big enough for easy clean out.

 

A future coop would be high enough off the ground so a wheelbarrow could be level with the floor to make clean out easy.

 

It would also have multiple chicken tunnels made from PVC conduit and chicken wire that extends out from the coop with doors for easy rotation.

 

A roll out nest box that worked and a feeder that kept out birds and rodents would also help to make raising chicken easier.

 

What innovation am I forgetting?  What feature would you add to a dream chicken coop?

Automatic chicken door inventor

September 28, 2015 Chicken coops, Chicken doors No Comments

Homestead inventorWe’re on vacation this week, so I thought you might enjoy hearing from another chicken-related inventor. Jeremy Smith came up with a low-cost, dependable, premade automatic chicken coop door to protect his flock, then decided to share his invention with the world. I’ll let him tell you more in his own words.

— Anna

 


In our quest to find a door that was reliable and safe to use in our own chicken’s house, we came up very short.  There is simply not much available out there.  So, the master carpenter who works for me and I began designing our own coop door opener that would be trustworthy and that would cause our coop to be secure should we ever not be available to get the girls closed up at night.


After designing and building our door for our own coop, we realized that we had something that other people like yourself might find useful in keeping your own flock.  I know that our 28 Buff Orpingtons have been quite an investment in money, time and even care.  It took 6 months of feeding, safeguarding and caring for before we ever saw our first egg, so you can imagine our concern when we found cats, raccoons, coyotes, you name it trying to enter our chicken’s coop.


Boxer chickenWho would have known that my family would have started keeping chickens much less be so concerned about their welfare?  My wife who hated the idea of keeping chickens at first would now be heartbroken if something got a hold of one of our girls.  If you have chickens, you know how much of a pet they can become. So we designed this Automatic Chicken Coop Door to help us protect our chickens but also give us our sanity back knowing that our chickens will be safe.


Since we created our own door we wanted to share it with all the other chicken owners out there so they could enjoy chickenkeeping without the constant worry for their flock’s safety. To that end, we now offer a DIY version for $124.95 and a premade version for $184.99 to make predator prevention even easier for the busy homesteader. Because every chicken deserves a safe nighttime roost!