Turn a Dog House into a Chicken Coop

I’m reposting this so you can see all of the improvements that we’ve made since we built our coop. Hopefully this will give you some ideas for your own coop.

When we came across a dog house in a curb pile a couple weeks back, we knew we had found our chicken coop. We hauled it home, made a few modifications, and now we have the perfect home for our hens.

Here’s a before picture …

And an after picture …

Quite the transformation don’t you think?

Now, here’s a look at how we modified the dog house, in case you want to tackle a similar makeover …

We cut off the roof and tweaked it so that it would be removable for cleaning. The original roofing job wasn’t great, so we used some tin that we rescued from a barn tear down to reroof it.

Then, we used some salvaged lumber to raise the dog house up off the ground (the legs were made from a redwood swing set beam that we rescued from another curb pile).

Since we wanted a moveable chicken tractor, we also added wheels, courtesy of an old lawn mower. We originally used smaller lawn mower wheels, but found these worked better.

To make it easier to move around, we also added a handle to the front side of the coop. It came from a curb pile, and was originally part of a swing set. To keep the chickens from kicking out their bedding, we also added a board across the bottom of the door.

A simple branch hung a few inches off the ground satisfies their need for a perch.

And because no coop would be complete without nesting boxes, we added a small addition on the back with room for two (the wood and hinges were also curb shopped).

A good sized run and a fresh coat of paint made our coop move in ready.

So far, our girls seem pleased with their new home.

See Also:

• Chickens and the Deep Litter System