The absolute best part about beginning the journey of chicken keeping is designing the coop. There are so many beautiful options! After a full year of research, I finally settled on a design that we built ourselves. Take a peek inside our cute cottage-style country chicken coop!
Our White Cottage Chicken Coop
Tiny House Meets Chicken Coop
My husband is a talented hobby carpenter who generously offered to build any chicken coop I wanted. I would Google “white chicken coop” and positively drool over the magazine-like images. What I truly wanted was a chicken coop that could double as a potting shed just in case this chicken keeping thing didn’t work out. It needed to look darling so it would add to our property value and I insisted it have a real cedar shingle roof with a big white cupola. And if it resembled an adorable tiny house with a covered front porch, my dreams would be complete!
Best Laid (Aside) Plans
We bought building plans which I immediately began changing. I moved the door, enlarged the windows, added windows, insisted on horizontal shiplap style siding…and my sweet husband was patient and supportive through it all. Luckily I had been warned about “chicken math” so we built the coop larger than what we anticipated needing. Chicken math is a real phenomenon that strikes many poultry owners, including me. Our coop, which can comfortably accommodate up to forty hens, is at half-capacity less than a year later.
The Seven Weekend Build
We began the coop September 23, 2018 and worked on it together for seven weekends until it was ready for my 4 week old chicks to move in. While I don’t recommend ordering chicks until after the coop is complete, we had to hurry if we wanted to have chicks delivered before the hatchery ceased shipping for the winter. It was an amazing process for us to share this building experience together. The coop itself was finished November 11, 2018 and deliberately built to stand for a lifetime.
Our White Cottage Chicken Coop
I am madly in love with how it turned out! It is the focal point of our little homestead and brings a smile to my face every day. It is as functional as it is beautiful, securely sheltering my flock from predators and the branch-flinging thunderstorms our area is prone to.
The Design Features
We live in Magnolia, Texas an hour northwest of Houston. It is often miserably sticky and humid with summers hot enough to kill hens. Airflow is a must which is why we opted for five large windows covered in sturdy half-inch hardware cloth.
The coop faces North, with trees shading the East and West sides to keep the coop comfortably cool. This orientation also shelters the birds from hard northwestern cold fronts and southeastern hurricane winds. The 21 inch wide windows happen to be a little narrower than standard bath towels, which I can secure in place with small clothes pins over the hardware cloth to block the wind on the coldest nights of the year.
Inside the Chicken Coop
The interior is painted the same bright white color as the exterior. This supposedly helps increase the light inside the coop on shorter days, encouraging the hens to lay better through the winter. I simply like how clean and farmhouse-y the white paint looks!
The floor of our coop is painted plywood and we use the deep litter method with wood chips. After six months the litter can be sifted to obtain fine garden compost while the larger mulch chunks are returned to the coop. We add 6 cubic feet (about two bags) of natural wood chip mulch every 6 weeks to replace what breaks down or is used for compost.
My Odor Control Secret Weapon
Twice a week I apply a light sprinkling of Sweet PDZ stall refresher to the surface of the wood chips to absorb any ammonia. This is an all natural mineral (zeolite) that is good for your garden soil and makes your chicken compost even better. The Sweet PDZ keeps the typically minimal chicken smell down to absolutely nothing. My coop smells like wood chips and the vanilla tree-shaped air fresheners I hang to keep flies away. (I learned the vanilla scent bothers flies but the hens don’t seem to notice it one bit.) It is a fantastic arrangement for our climate!
The Open Air Run
Outside the coop is a 36 foot run that was added in April 2019. Here the girls devour fruit and vegetable scraps, garden clippings and all the bugs they can eat every morning until the eggs are laid and it is time to free range. The wire roof stops hawk attacks and a shallow wading pool of water helps keep them cool in the summer. I’ve learned that chickens are a bit like annuals: they need morning sun, afternoon shade and good hydration.
The Self-Sustaining Flock
A couple times per year we hatch chicks using the incubator or sometimes we leave a few eggs under whichever hen has decided to go broody. (In this case it was a Buff Orpington.) Adding new laying hens every year or two ensures a steady supply of eggs and who can resist an adorable little hatchling?
The Chicken Tractor
This has been such a handy thing to have! Our white, triangle-shaped chicken tractor was built based on plans by Ana White and receives frequent use. It is wonderful for keeping month-old chicks safely corralled as they begin learning how to forage and serves as an ideal quarantine area if we want to slowly introduce a new friend to the flock. Maybe it is ridiculous to technically have two coops but I’ve yet to run out of uses for that sturdy chicken tractor!
A Special Thank You
I want to take a moment to thank my husband, Brian, for his tireless work, patience and enthusiasm when it came to building this gift for our family. As my gift to you, the coop now has one final addition so the world remembers the amazing craftsman who built it.
You Can Do This!
The best-built, most secure and cutest coop will be the one you build yourself. Select quality materials, long-lasting exterior paint, heavy duty hardware and durable hardware cloth for a finished creation that will serve you and your flock well for years to come.
Thank you for letting us share our white cottage chicken coop with you! Even if your flock doesn’t need its own tiny house, I hope you have felt inspired to dream big!
Still feel a bit overwhelmed?
If you’re a buy-once-cry-once, do-it-right-the-first-time (because it saves money in the end) type of person like me but building your own coop feels intimidating, you’re not alone. Urban Coop Company out of Dripping Springs, Texas (near Austin) offers durably built red cedar coops designed for Texas flocks. The delight of keeping chickens is worth the initial investment for long-term peace of mind and enjoyment!
Krissy says
It turned out awesome! 💗🐥💗🐥