We’ve been keeping chickens for over a year now, and seeing the fresh eggs each day is still quite a nice surprise. It is a really good feeling to eat what we produce on our little homestead.

But the first chicken coop version had a lot of negatives. The roof was too low so I constantly banged my head on it, and the whole thing was much larger than it needed to be. (This was intentional, figuring that it would be easier to clean if I could get inside, but some decisions made during construction resulted in it being quite difficult for me to get inside.)

So we took some inspiration from pictures on the internet and built a second generation chicken coop.

It was built over the course of the last week from pallet wood and some left-over roofing from the kitchen building:

It has two wheelbarrow wheels on one side so that it can be lifted on the other end and rolled like a wheelbarrow:

The wheels are just below the nesting boxes with a convenient polycarbonate lid (more scrap materials left over from other construction) for opening and fetching the eggs.

Besides the pallet wood frame, the sides are reinforced with chain link and made mosquito and other insect proof with mosquito screen:

But the side panels near the nesting box can slide open for easy cleaning access:

On the other side is a plywood door that can open:

And inside, there is a roosting bar and a little ladder to make it easier for them to climb up to the nesting boxes:

You’ll notice that the bottom is completely open. This allows the chickens to fertilize the soil directly, and we can simply move the whole coop to another area when it is time for a “fresh floor”. 🙂

It turned out to be a little heavier than I expected. I can lift the end and move it, but not comfortably. It feels like it is near the limit of what I can lift. Probably better to just use two people for this.

Now we just need to figure out where to put it and move he chickens in.