By early mid-May, it was obvious the chicks were outgrowing their dining room table nighttime home. We looked online for possible permanent coops, but none of them appealed to us, and we thought the chicks would be too big by the time we ordered and built a kit. We kept them in the soccer tractor during the day, but of course, they couldn't be in there at night. We'd already spotted a large coyote roaming our neighborhood late one night, and we knew any home for the chicks would need to withstand an attack by this large predator.
At first we tried building our own permanent coop.
Here we are in our garage painting and priming wood. We eventually built a fairly large box out of plywood, and we attended to attach it below our kids swing set, which had a large platform, and was a perfect chicken coop size. However, we couldn't figure out exactly how to attach the box at a decent height. Not only that, we figured out that the space would actually be too big for our three chickens, and also, we wanted something that could be moved around the yard so that the chickens could eat the grass and bugs.
In addition to the coyotes, our area also has large hawks and cormorants, so we can't let the chickens free range. Belle, the pure white one, would not last long, as a hawk would certainly spot her. We've come home numerous times when our cat would be hiding from one of the hawks or cormorants circling above, so we knew the chickens would need strong protection from above. At this point, we only had about a week before the chickens would outgrow their current home in the brooder, and of course, they couldn't live in the soccer tractor at night. We were running out of time.
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