I feel like chicken tonight

One advantage of living in Portland is that the city allows residents to keep three chickens. I've decided to take full advantage of the northwestern hospitality. It also helps that our CSA farm, Artisan Organics, is selling laying hens right now. Usually chickens remind me of poop, chores, and the creepy farmers from Napoleon Dynamite, but I think that they'll provide me with a nice structure to my day, incentive to wake up at dawn, and of course, eggs.

Before getting the chickens, I needed to construct a coop. Starting out, I had a very limited understanding of what chickens require. I educated myself by getting a book on chickens and coop design at Livingscape, a nursery near my house. Yes, a book. While the internet has many, blogs, posts, and videos related to urban chicken farming, I wasn't able to find anything coherent and complete. I also wanted to look at designs for backyard chicken tractors, and I couldn't find any complete plans for free online. For now, my chicken Bible is Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock. It contains both coop plans and instructions for caring for chickens. While the plans were very helpful, I thought it would be more fun to make my own design.



I built the coop using as much reclaimed wood as possible. The Rebuilding Center in Mississippi sells reclaimed lumber and pretty much everything else you'd need to build a house. It's pretty awesome not just because it saves the planet, the entire planet, but also because the lumber is cheap. Really cheap. I wasn't able to scrounge up any reusable chicken wire or plastic roofing material, so I had to pick them up at Lowe's.

Here's some of the features of the coop:

• The bottom of the coop is open to the grass so that the chickens can find worms.


• The roof is detachable, allowing for easy poop scooping.


• The nest box, floor, and roost in the upper area are all removable for easy cleaning.


• There is a window on one side of the coop and an egg fetching hatch on the other.


• A pulley and rope are attached to the chicken ladder, making it easy to pull up the ladder at night.

The chickens seem to like it!