chicken coop idea | Backyard Roots

While working on Backyard Roots I came across some great ways to use pallets. I loved this turkey coop that Tom Ferguson from Dog Island Farm made in Vallejo. He told me that he first built a frame out of 2x4s to fit the pallets, he then added pallet walls stuffed with straw and covered with chicken wire, then added a plywood roof and the door. A great coop idea if your climate doesn’t get too cold.

Here’s another coop idea below, that Maya Blow and Nevada Cross, Soulflower Farm, have in their El Sobrante Farm. They lined part of their coop with wood and added a recycled window. Soulflower Farm has some great classes coming up including Natural Beekeeping, Mushroom Cultivation, and Herbal Cleansing for Women at their East Bay Farm. Check them out.

Below is Stacey Brewer’s herb planter, Seattle Seedling. She has a video on youtube explaining how she did it, but she basically stapled pockets out of landscape material and then planted herbs. Looks great!

And the last idea is Connie Van Dyke’s double wide composter out of 5 pallets screwed together into two U-shaped bins. Its helpful to have a double composter because once one side is filled you can start on the other. Connie composts one side for a full year. She checks the progress with a composting thermometer. The temperature needs to reach 140-150 degrees F to kill pathogens.

When I saw John Thornton’s cob chicken coop I knew I had to go visit. You really can’t find a more basic building material than cob. It’s an ages old building technique that uses earth, clay and straw. His coop is much more than just cob though. He creatively incorporates recycled windows, doors and a green roof into his design that kind of looks like hobbits should be coming out the front door.

John has also found raising chickens to be an effective therapy tool at his job working with teenagers with behavioral and chemical dependencies. He’s says a lot of the kids have an “empathy disconnect” and teaching them how to care and nurture for an animal is a way to reach them. For the project he had each teenager raise a chick from turning the egg each day while in the incubation stage and then caring for them as they grew. He knew the project was successful when one of the teenagers, who before the program had a hard time expressing any emotion, cried when his chick died.

Having chickens at home was a way to produce food in his yard that was too shady for growing vegetables. He joined a local Portland CSA called Backyard Bounty (it will be an upcoming post) and he barters his eggs to help offset the CSA costs. When I visited he had just added two baby goats. He looks forward to a future of goat milk.