Build This Predator-Proof, Portable Chicken Coop for Your Backyard

By Robin Mather

EmailPrintFacebookPinterestTwitter

1 / 5

This new and improved incarnation of the portable chicken coop is designed for three to four chickens, and anybody can build it.

ILLUSTRATION: DAVID STILES

❮❯

Having a few laying hens in the backyard has almost become the icon of today’s self-sufficiency movement. Birds kept in a portable chicken coop on pasture provide delicious, inexpensive eggs, and eggs from birds that get plenty of grass, bugs and seeds to eat are better for you than store-bought eggs (read the results of our egg nutrition testing in The Good Egg). Hens are great converters of kitchen waste into valuable manure for the garden, and every chicken owner we know takes a lot of pleasure in just watching the chickens noodle around in the yard.

But free-range birds are often taken by foxes, bobcats, hawks, dogs or other predators, so unless you have guardian dogs that can keep predators away, your best option is probably a portable chicken coop that gives the chickens access to fresh grass and dirt every day while also keeping them protected.

Over the years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has offered several DIY chicken coop plans, particularly designs for portable chicken coops. It has been a challenge. The perfect coop should be lightweight and easy to build — even for a child or an older person — yet it must be sturdy enough to keep predators away from the birds, and it shouldn’t cost too much money.

One early version, designed in 2003 by MOTHER EARTH NEWS contributing editor Steve Maxwell and Editor-in-Chief Cheryl Long, was a wooden A-frame affair with wheels on one end to help make it easy for one person to move. Created after Maxwell and Long conferred with poultry experts, the coop is a gorgeous piece of work (read more about it in MOTHER’s Mini-Coop) meant to last for years. However, the coop requires a fair amount of carpentry skills to build, and the cost of the materials and the required tools are beyond some folks’ budgets.

In 2007, Long presented another coop idea in Portable Chicken Mini-Coop Plan. “I set out to create a coop design that would be low-cost, easy to build, light enough to move easily and scaled to fit well even in small backyards,” Long wrote. “It’s intended for three or four hens, costs only about $100 in materials and can be assembled in a few hours from standard welded wire fencing.” This portable chicken coop plan includes an inexpensive plastic doghouse, slightly modified, to shelter the chickens. This super-lightweight, low-cost option works fine if you can place it inside a fenced yard or garden. Unfortunately, the run’s unframed wire mesh walls are not strong enough to prevent large dogs from smashing them down and killing the chickens, as Long sadly learned.

Undaunted, Long next designed an ultra-sturdy coop, MOTHER’s Mighty Chicken-Mobile, in 2011’s Build an Affordable, Portable and Predator-Proof Chicken Coop. It’s sized to fit on a raised garden bed so the chickens can till up the soil with their scratching. This portable coop with a welded iron frame is solid and predator-proof indeed, and it will last forever, but Long reports the steel frame makes it too heavy for some people to move easily (and you’d have to find a welder to build it for you if you don’t have that skill).

Now we have a new and improved incarnation of the portable chicken coop with your choice of shapes. This pen is framed with 1-inch Schedule 40 plastic pipe, and its walls are covered with 1-by-2-inch welded wire mesh. A removable panel of 2-by-4-inch welded wire mesh covers the bottom, which gives the chickens room to scratch but is easy to take off if you wish to set the coop on a garden bed and let the chickens till in their manure.

Like its portable predecessors, this coop-with-run is designed for three to four chickens. The birds shelter in an enclosure at one end made of the same durable yet easy-to-work corrugated plastic that the postal service uses in its mail tubs, and a cleverly fitted 5-gallon pail with a special cover serves as a nest box.

We worked with Joe Ramey of Circo Innovations in Grass Valley, Calif., (see contact information later in this article) to design two easy-to-build coops that anyone from age 9 to 90 can assemble using no special tools. Circo Innovations offers MOTHER EARTH NEWS readers specially priced kits with all of the fittings and pipes cut to size, as well as kits of just the needed fittings. Of course, if you’d like to use your own materials, you can see detailed diagrams on Circo’s website. (See the resources section later in this article for more information on the Circo kits and to find the corrugated plastic and the 5-gallon pail nest box.)

The pieces of the coop frames glue together easily, strongly and permanently. Their exteriors are clad in welded wire mesh, and you’ll need easy-to-use J-clip pliers to join the welded wire sections. To cinch the mesh to the plastic framing, we used 17-gauge smooth galvanized wire, which is easy to bend yet durable. Both coops have handles for easy moving.

Related Articles

Edible Flowers List: Recipes for Cooking with Edible FlowersIncluding recipes for Nasturtium Balsamic Chicken, Beans with Flower Confetti, and Violet Coconut CakeCoconut Cream Bread RecipeCoconut cream can be used in teas, coffee, cookies, and even homemade bread. Creamy coconut adds extra flavor and depth to each loaf.Classic Cedarwood and Coconut Milk Shaving Soap RecipeLearn to make your own shaving soap from scratch with this natural soap recipe.

Rounded Design

We designed the first portable chicken coop using green pipes with the idea that urban and suburban folks may want to make their coop as unobtrusive and attractive as possible.

For this green coop, we simulated the shape of the classic hoop house or high tunnel. The shape of this coop saves a bit of money on the cost of the welded wire mesh because it uses a little less than the rectangular coop. We chose pre-bent plastic hoops, which made assembly even faster. In rainy or snowy climates, a tarp thrown over a coop of this shape will shelter the birds without puddles of water or snow weight distorting the wire.

This portable unit costs about $370 and weighs less than 50 pounds with all of the mesh and fittings included. It’s so light that one person can easily lift either end to shift it to new ground and fresh grass. At 39 1/2 inches wide and just under 9 feet long, it’s roomy for up to four birds, even with a third of it acting as an enclosed shelter. It sits neatly on a 4-by-10-foot raised garden bed, with a little room to spare so the chickens won’t throw all the dirt out of the bed. This coop is so secure that you don’t need to lock the birds in the shelter at night.

Rectangular Design

The completed rectangular coop kit costs around $300 — less than the hooped coop, because it uses less expensive white plastic pipe, but it requires slightly more welded wire mesh. It, too, is so light that anyone can move it easily, and is big enough for four birds. It will also sit on a 4-by-10-foot raised garden bed.

Both coops use the durable corrugated plastic to provide shelter for the chickens. This material is strong and flexible, simple to work with, and is easily cut with an X-Acto or utility knife. Those who wish for an unobtrusive coop can order it in green, but the less expensive white, translucent version provides some solar gain to warm the chickens in winter.

We used a cordless drill to punch holes in the plastic and