Le Palais de Poulet
I built my first chicken coop out of some old hollow-core closet doors back in 1990. Never having built a coop, I thought it was pretty good. Small and squat (basically 4 x 4 x 4 feet), it had a shed roof and a lifting top that allowed me to pop it open and grab the eggs out of the nesting box.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that a little coop with just one opening might be cozy in our mild Southern California winters, but in the summer it turned into a smelly, hot, airless box (think “The Box” from Cool Hand Luke). Not surprisingly, the chickens would have nothing to do with it at those times and would lay eggs in the bushes and roost in the trees at night.
Of course, chickens being completely clueless animals at night, they were easy pickings for nocturnal tree climbers like Opossums and Raccoons and I lost all four chickens in the span of a few nights.
So I tore down the first chicken coop and set about building what my wife termed “Le Palais de Poulet”, or “The Chicken Palace”.
Not The Chicken Palace, but close
This time I built a full-sized coup 100 feet deep, 8 feet wide and tall, complete with a front door, windows and ventilation better than my own house. I also built a series of luxury nesting boxes (private bath, cable TV - the works), and two levels of roosting area. In front of the coop I also built an enclosed entry “courtyard” that kept out the varmits and made everything safe and secure in the evenings.
Over time jasmine and climbing roses have grown over the courtyard enclosure and most people have a hard time believing that it’s actually a chicken coop and not a bungalow. The ducks obviously figured the chickens were getting a better deal and eventually abandoned their own place and moved in with the chickens. Now the chickens spend their evenings “upstairs” in the roosting areas and the ducks “downstairs” in comfort under the nesting boxes.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of the coop at this time because the entire thing is obscured by trees and vines. But in the next few weeks I’ll be doing some pruning for spring and I should be able to get some nice pictures then.
Until then, enjoy this description and photos of the chicken coop built by the folks at Rurality.
