The Vortex of Infinite Nothingness

The Easy Care Chicken Coop

In designing the coop think about it this way. You have a variety of things needed to be incorporated in the coop. You have limited space so the design amounts to arranging the required things around the exterior of the coop. These things include:

a perch for roosting
a feeder, My PVC pipe design below can hold and keep fresh 3+ weeks of food
water, my auto-water systems holds a week of water
easy access nest boxes
a door to let the chickens out
a door to let the humans in
a shelf
a window
air vents
It's good to add electricity, multiple outlets.
I also added a water pipe
built a closet on the coops side for tool and feed storage is nice.

In addition some features that makes caring for the birds easier.

Deep litter technique saves tons of work and the chickens are healthier. With 6 to 8 inches of litter I only have to replace the litter every 6 months for six chickens in the plan below. If you do this you must place the bottom of all doors 8 inches above the floor so the doors are above the level of the litter.
With the door up 8 inches above the floor you can make the board below the door removeable making cleaning easy and if the floor has a couple inch slope toward the door you can hose it out and all the water runs right out the door.
I separated the chicken run outside into two sections. This way you can grow weeds on one side while the hens feed on the other. For this I made two hen doors one for each run. The runs can also be opened to each other.
If the coop is raised above the ground the crawl space below can provide many functions, an outdoor sheltered from the rain or if you can raise meat birds on one half of the chicken run and let them sleep in the space under the coop. Meat birds don't need a perch.
Painting and caulking the interior helps when controlling mites is necessary.
A automatic door opener. Mine was made from a motorized curtain opener but I have heard of using a automatic car antenna from a junk yard, and someone suggested a old air vent opener solenoid from a heating duct system. (Who wants to get out of bed just to let the chickens out, beside I can leave town for at least a week, no problem.)

I used a shed kit consisting of metal brackets that helps with the roof and floor wall stud construction called 2x4basics 90192 Shed Kit making construction easy. I devieated from the kits basic plan but the brackets really worked great.

Now take all these things and arrange them on a floor made from a 4x8 peace of plywood. My easy to care for urban coop accommodated 6 to 10 hens. I usually start with 12 chicks and cull down to 6 as roosters appear and twice a year I put 10 meet chickens in the run on the left and let them sleep under the coop. They finish off in 6 weeks. One other advantage is the sloping ground. As the chickens scratch all the shit migrates to the low corner of the run and is easy to scoop out.

It is more work building a coop with all these things incorporated but after it's done it pays off. I get eggs every day or two, fill water weekly, feed every 3+ weeks, clean out litter every 6 months and sleep in every day.

Basic Design

Floor Plan

Exterior views

The run

The PVC Feeder

Parts: Do not use toxic ABS pipe only PVC.
2inch PVC
2 - Double Y
5 - 45 degree elbows
3 - 90 degree elbows
1 - 2 inch pipe to cut up and connect them
1 - 4 inch pipe for the large hoppers
3 - 2 to 4 inch pipe adapters
Pipe strapping tape to strap it to the wall
File around the sharp edges of the pipes where the hen eat from

Automatic door opener
Made from an electric automatic curtain opener.
A cord connect to the door runs up an around the curtain motor wheel and back down to a counterweight made of a soda bottle filled with sand of equal weight. A timer turns it on for one minute in the morning to open and one in the evening to close. There are two doors and the opener can be moved to either door. Each door goes to two separate runs so I can choose where the hens can be or both runs can be opened to each other.