We're building a chicken coop!

Here it is so far. Actually it's a bit further along than this now. I built the nest boxes yesterday and today I made the front door and got that hung. Tomorrow I have to make the back door and a screen window. On the right side I'm going to put a little "pop door" with a slider to let them in and out of the pen - which isn't built yet.

The "attic" area is going to be used to store the garden tools.

Ken's been tied up with firefighter training but he got the trusses up and hopefully tomorrow he'll get home early enough to put the roof on. He has the purlins on one side already and all the roofing material ready to go so it won't take but a couple of hours.

We decided to put it close to the house. It'll be nice to just step outside to collect the eggs but it will also be safer for the chickens. There are so many predators back there around the barn. We lost all of our other chickens to raccoons. They were in a pen with a shelter but the racoons would grab them as they ran close to the wire. We didn't want to get anymore until we had a good coop to be able to lock them up in at night.

I based the design on these Jimmy Vyse Arks available in the UK.

I'm having so much fun! I love building! A bit chilly at this time of the year though.