Loading…
1
My neighbor in Roanoke looked at my coop and asked why I was making more work for myself
I built my first coop with a hinged roof that I had to prop open with a stick every single morning to clean and grab eggs. My neighbor Dave, who has kept hens for 20 years, watched me fight with that stick for about a week and finally asked why I did not just put the access door on the side at waist height. It took me one Saturday and about $40 in hinges and latch hardware to cut a new door, and now I can reach everything without a ladder or a prop stick. The funny part is I had copied that roof design from a photo online without thinking about how I would actually use it every day. I also moved my feeder and waterer to hang at back level so they stay cleaner, which cut my refill trips from twice a day to once. If you are planning a build this spring, walk through your morning routine in your head first, then build around that. What is the one thing in your setup you would change if you could start over?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
susan_ward7d ago
Think this same thing happens everywhere, not just with chicken coops. People copy what looks nice in a photo without ever picturing themselves using it at 6am in the rain. I see it with truck setups, shop layouts, even how folks stack firewood. We borrow the picture but skip the part where we actually live with the thing every day. The fix is almost always boring and cheap, like your side door, but you only find it after you suffer through the dumb version first. Walking through your morning in your head before you build is the whole trick, and most of us learn it the hard way.
2