With our eleven baby chicks growing quickly, we need to build a home for them. We do have one small chicken coop already, occupied by our six adult hens. Everything we have read indicates that we should not try to mix the young with the old, at least until the young ones have grown to be full sized.

Our baby chicks are mostly Ameraucanas, with two ISO Browns thrown into the mix. Supposedly all are hens, not roosters, though we won't know for sure until they're grown. There are ways of sexing them, but it is not trivial. As an aside, if you ever want to see an interesting process, find a video of someone sexing baby chicks at a chicken farm. They can do it amazingly fast by looking at the tip of the feathers.

So we needed a chicken coop. My wife would also (someday) like a garden shed for all of our garden and yard tools, and for the riding lawn mower. We decided to combine the two desires and to make a chicken coop large enough that it could someday serve as a garden shed.

We designed a coop that is 8 feet by 8 feet, with a door that is 6 feet tall, and with a roof that has a 4/12 pitch. The project has provided good carpentry experience for the kids (and for us adults).

We were fortunate that my parents were visiting when we started this project. Dad got all the framing done, with the help of the kids.

Underneath the floor we have joists made out of treated lumber that are sitting on top of concrete blocks.

We will have a window on the right side of the coop, using an old window that we had replaced on our house. There will also be a little "chicken door" on the back so that the hens can go in and out of the coop into their fenced in pen area.

We are going to add a metal roof, which should be relatively easy to install.

On the left side of the coop, we will install nesting boxes that will allow us to retrieve the fresh eggs from the outside without having to go inside the coop.

There will also be a large pen with a chicken wire cover. We will dig a trench around the perimeter of the pen enclosure as well, burying chicken wire so that predators cannot dig underneath the fence.

Yes, it's all a lot of work, but it's a great learning experience for the kids.