[niccid]

If you are thinking of buying a chicken coop, think again. They are sooooo expensive and although time consuming and more work, think about building your own.

The OH and I are in the process of building a coop from scratch. We drove around our local industrial estates and scrounged some unwanted pallets. Wood that would have just been throw away or burnt (some were broken, but only a little), is being re-cycled and being used for our chook house.

Now I am not saying this is the easy option, by no means, and you do need big enough transport (we made a few trips) but it is the greener and cheaper one. We have paid NOTHING for the wood to build our coop.

Just a couple of rules though, always ask, don't just take, even if you think it is rubbish and always be polite. If someone says no, don't be rude.

Happy hunting

[jack russell]

hopefully you are taking pics as you build too post on here  

Its the law

[niccid]

We will Jack, yes, LOL, we are breaking up the pallets at the moment, and the pics are not very exciting so once construction begins, the pics will be going up as a stage by stage run through of how we did it.

[muntjac]

hear hear  

[waltong]

I was thinking of doing exactly the same.  What size are you making?  How many pallets are you using and how many birds can you fit in?

So many questions...

[niccid]

Waltong, we've had about 15 pallets so far, some of the wood isn't quite good enough so we might need some more but managed to get them broken up now and looking to build a 4ft x 4ft coop, and thinking of 10 chickens. I think 16sq ft is  a reasonable size. Is that big enough for 10??? All advice welcome.

[Oscar Too]

Makes me laugh that people spend GBP300 plus on a plastic coop.  You need to eat an awful lot of "free" eggs to get your money back on that.  Your coop will probably cost tuppence-ha'penny and you'll have fun building it.

[niccid]

Egg-xactly, sorry bad chicken joke. Seriously though, some of those plastic or even some wooden ones i've seen are soooooooo expensive. I did see a really nice wood one, pre-built and it was £600  :shock:

You'd be surprised what you can get for free if you ask nicely .