coop building

I am working on my chicken cooop.    The coop will be  8 feet long  by 2 1/2 feet wide.  
    It is a stand up cage not a walk in and  2 1/2 is about how far i can reach inside the cage.

But  I am trying too figure out the best way to build the walls.    I am trying to do it with materal that I am able to find in my Urban setting.  
I am able to obtain pallets  where once broken apart I have wood that are about 2 feet in length and 2 inches thick.
 Also wood that is about 2 1/2 feet in length (but not as many)   .  I am also able to get plywood that is 2 feet by 2 feet.

So  How  can i use this to build my walls.    

Would this work
North  and South side would be  8 feet long
and  West and East would be 2 1/2 feet long.

1))make 16 squars with my 2 feet length boards
Give 8 to the North side and  8 to the south side,

2)On the Bottom of the north side  place 4 squares on the bottom attached to the floor frame (which is a series of pallets) with screws
then dop the same  with the south side.

3) Make 4  squares for the West and East Side.
  place 1  square on the west side and 1 square on the east side. Attach it with Screws.

4)  Attach  with screws the North side boards and the south sides boards too the West side and East side boards.


That would be level 1  which give me a height of 2 feet.


Next  which is my main question
can i stack anothor group of  frames on top of the first set in order to give me a height of 4 feet.  Would this work or would it be too unstable.  
If it is not a good idea what other options might i have?


b) make   4 squares

I'm not visualizing what your asking, my fault not yours, but I can tell you that if it were me and I wasn't making a tractor, I would simply screw pallets together into a square or rectangular cube and fill in the walls with scrap pieces, put a few roosting bars and slap a sheet of tin over the top. Making a door would be the hardest part.

Cj Picker wrote:I'm not visualizing what your asking, my fault not yours, but I can tell you that if it were me and I wasn't making a tractor, I would simply screw pallets together into a square or rectangular cube and fill in the walls with scrap pieces, put a few roosting bars and slap a sheet of tin over the top. Making a door would be the hardest part.

That is almost what i am doing.   The problem is that my pallets  are  between 2 feet and 2 1/2 feet high.  Which I dont think is high enough for a coop.
So  the question would then become  could i stand pallets on top of each other. to make it 4 feet high.

The other problem with doing it only by  screwing pallets together is that the coop would be on the ground and  I would have to worry qabout preditors.

You could go 1 pallet high and put your tin roof on hinges to access feed/water/eggs, basically a stationary "salitin" tractor. If it's only 2.5 feet wide you won't be gaining much by being able to walk in anyhow.  Just run a 2x4 across the top to hang your feeder and waterer and screw a couple milk crates to the wall for nesting boxes where you can reach the eggs.  Not sure what predators you have but if you're worried about something burrowing under, you could build it on top of some chicken wire or bury something around the perimeter.

If you have chickens, you have to worry about predators. It's part of the whole chicken package.

Elevating your chickens makes it easier to protect them in some respects, but protection from predators is something you will need to have in the back of your mind for as long as your have chickens. Any poultry, really.

You could stand the pallets on each other, elevating your roosting/nesting space by a pallet's height. You would need to make sure everything was well fastened together, and that it was stable. Maybe a concrete or rock foundation to help the wood last longer would be a good idea. Not necessary, immediately, but something to think about for later.

You want to protect the bottom of your coop/run and make sure nothing dangerous can get inside, so make sure there aren't any large spaces or holes between planks. Otherwise, making squares sounds like a great idea! You can build each square individually, then put them all together in a fun pattern. The spaces between the boards will help with ventilation, and you can get replacement/repair pieces pretty easily.
It's a great idea!

Goat wire fencing is my strong suggestion for wire fencing in your run. Hardware cloth is strongly suggested for covering spaces. I know if people who line their coops with hardware cloth, but you don't have to go that far.
Chicken wire is only a useful thing if it's lining something else, you're doing a craft project, or there's some other light use for it. Chicken wire is not actually used for chicken keeping.

Have fun building! You'll soon be making changes and your next coop building project will be better with all the things you learn about your local area and how you want to manage your chickens.
I'm planning, thinking about, my new coop project for the spring. You have given me a few ideas to consider. Thank you!

If you have raccoons, you may need to make your coop wider. Or have vey very small gaps between yor pallet boards. I have friends who, in thier first summer of chicken ownership, made a night cage of chicken wire about three by three and put a tin roof on it. Soon there was a ruckus one night. The coons had reached thru the chicken wire grabbed chickens and pullled the heads off through the wire. There just wasn't enough room for the chickens to avoid coons on both sides of their cage. A much much bigger fort was constructed with hardware cloth armor when they succeded in keeping chickens the next time.

I'm a strong believer in 1/2" hardware cloth for protecting chickens. The old expression, "build it and they will come", could have been written as "build a chicken coop and the predators will come". Predators that you didn't think even lived in your ecosystem or you've never seen, will show up. We haven't seen bears or cougars yet (but it's not impossible), but we've had mink, racoon, feral cats and rats on the ground and Raven, Eagle, Hawks of several sorts, and Owls from above. For that matter, domestic dogs have been a problem for some people in our area.

If the coop is only going to be 2 1/2 feet wide, is it possible you could hang it from posts or trees so it's at a comfortable working height?

That is almost what i am doing.   The problem is that my pallets  are  between 2 feet and 2 1/2 feet high.  Which I dont think is high enough for a coop.
So  the question would then become  could i stand pallets on top of each other. to make it 4 feet high.  

I think for most chickens 2 and 1/2 feet ought to be plenty. There are some chickens that get pretty big, but most of the common breeds that I have dealt with are not much more than 18" tall. If you get a smaller breed that height should be fine. And yes, you could stack them (put some diagonal pieces for support), but again, I don't think it would be needed for many chickens.

I build a lot of pallet cubes for outdoor storage, my compost bins, etc.

You could edge stack identical pallets on top of each other for additional height.
I haven't built my chicken coop yet so I can't comment on the necessity or wisdom of that.

If edge stacking whole (Heat Treated only)pallets, I would fasten the upper pallets to the lower pallets, inside and out, with these:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Simpson-Strong-Tie-TP-1-13-16-in-x-5-in-20-Gauge-Galvanized-Tie-Plate-TP15/100375260

Those are cheap and available at any big box store. This is an inherently unstable small structure,  vertical screws won't hold pallets edge stacked on top of each other reliably.

I would also lay out the coop first, mark the four corners, and use a fence post driver to drive some rebar
in for support. Again, cheap at the big box store if  you can't scrounge it. The fence post drive is a good tool to have.
You said urban, so you'll want to avoid dying with huge monetary claims on your estate by calling 811 first. Use an angle grinder ( 20 bucks at Harbor freight) to cut the rebar sharp at the ground level.  

If I was using whole pallets, I would also stuff the void spaces with some sort of anti-vermin insulation material, and seal them off with scrap wood. There's a lot of nooks and crannies in there. I think that you could get some free clean hardwood sawdust and mix it with lime, like in cordwood building, on the cheap. But I have no idea if that would be good for chickens.

I would use the roosting bars as additional support beams inside the structure, and I would spend the money on good exterior screws rather than cheap drywall screws throughout the coop.

If you are planning on doing anymore pallet building, you will celebrate with joy the first time you use a pallet buster tool. $70 bucks from the East India Tea Comp Amazon. Huge time and back saver.

Please post pics of your build when done.

This is my current progress:

If I were to install a flat roof, I estimate that the cage height would be about 2 feet, which, from my understanding, is not sufficiently high.

Based on Jeff Lindsay's suggestion, I acquired some tie plates to create a more robust "second floor." I am contemplating placing two nesting boxes where the "windows" are; initially, I had planned to position them inside the existing cage.

I plan to incorporate a front and a back door. These will serve as access points for releasing the chickens and cleaning the cages. Ideally, I would like to position the cage within their run and let them out through one of the doors as needed. Eventually, I hope to construct a mobile tractor to put them to work.

At present, my task is to gather more pallet wood for building the second floor. While obtaining additional 2-feet boards is straightforward, this would raise the coop's roof height to 4 feet, which may be too large, and I have concerns about stability. I would rather avoid cutting the wood since my cutting skills are not perfect, and I might end up with uneven pieces (I am using a jigsaw).

Hi Marc,
What are you concerns with the height being only 2ft? I should think that would be fine.

Marc,

That’s some great progress.
I can’t wait to see the finished product so I can
copy it!

Keep up the good work.

Jeff

Marc Siegel wrote: While obtaining additional 2-feet boards is straightforward, this would raise the coop's roof height to 4 feet, which may be too large, and I have concerns about stability.

I agree you should have some concern about stability with it being only 2 1/2 feet wide.

1. Do you have a standard wind direction, and will it hit the coop "long side" on?
2. In the narrow direction, your picture shows skids at the bottom. Can you make some extensions attached to the skid's bottom 2x4's that stick out a foot to 18 inches each direction? These could either have a weight - like salvage brick or a big rock - placed on top to add stability, or we have shelters that move and to stop them from moving when we don't want them to, we bought foot long giant nails and we hammer them through a hole in the tie-down bar into the earth. If it's typical weather, we only do that at the "following edge" so it's quicker to move the shelter. But if there's a wind warning, we tie them down in 3 or 4 corners, plus/minus put their water buckets in critical spots to add mass!

So what I'm saying is - yes this is a potential concern - but no, it is not a show stopper. There are things you can do to fix the concern and if my suggestion above doesn't make sense in your situation, just keep posting your progress and I or others will help you problem solve to make things safe!

It sounds like you're adding extra doors and I think that's a good idea as it may make things more flexible to use and easier to clean.