Where can I buy a reasonably cheap chicken coop?

[IWishIWasMaryPoppins]

My daughter desperately wants chickens for her birthday. We have the room, but limited finances and DIY skills. So I need to find a ready-made, but not very expensive (as in well under £100) chicken coop and run.

Is it actually possible?

[NappiesGalore]

yeah i think so.
not neccessarily well under a hundred or you start to throw money away on crap you need to replace in no time... but tell me your specs and ill give you some links

[NappiesGalore]

specs as in how many chooks, what size of chook, can they free range or do you need em in a run all the time, are you rural/urban etc

[marmadukescarlet]

TBH, you get what you pay for with all these things.

I have seen some quite cheap ones at local auction, but on closer examination realised they would be almost impossible to clean out properly. Pop hole only big enough for bantums and run not big enough to keep even a small chicken happy.

Scour the second hand cols of your local paper and do it up with a lick of (chook friendly) paint?

Even chooks are around £10-12 ech from a decent place, not exactly cheap - and that's before you get into shavings, louse powder, poultry shield (disinfectant) feeders, drinkers, pellets and grit.

[IWishIWasMaryPoppins]

Thanks Nappies!
I am thinking of starting with two laying hens, but no more than three. I have a fairly large (30') garden lots of grass etc so ideal for chickens

I heave dreams of getting bantams - but most likely just a couple of mongrel type birds...

Oh and I would prefer to have a coop that I can pick up and move to a new patch when they desolate the grass!

[IWishIWasMaryPoppins]

Oh and I am rural so I would need them in the run all the time

[TheGreatScootini]

I need this too as I want to get some hens but dont know where to start.I want to get two.We are urban ish, but we have an area about 10 by 20 feet for the Coop and a bit more for a run.Will this be enough room?

[NappiesGalore]

moveable is good. they really do have a go at the ground so you need to keep movin g them.
and bantams a v good idea imo, in terms of keeping them in. they also do less damage. they arent that much more expensive and youre only getting 2 (ive seen it advised to get 3 so that if you lose one, yourenot left with one alone, they are social creatures)

giz a chance to look at the variuos makers so i can post some links for you (bear with me am dizzy and odd in head today)

[NappiesGalore]

actually rural is better for foxes than anywhere urban or suburban... i am rural and foxes are around but never bother us (so far! touch wood an all that)

[NappiesGalore]

great scootini - if i were you id be looking at getting walk in run panels and then having a wee house within that. run panels of 5'x3' or 5'x4' can be got for anything from about 20 quid upwards. you just have to screw them together.

[NappiesGalore]

i recommend joining this forum to find info on all things chickeny. they have a page of links to housing makers and everything.

off top of head good makers are:
littleacre
smiths sectional
oh bah, cant remember other names... will come to me

avoid anything with felt on roof - is evil for redmites which are baaaaad.
avoid arks if you can as they are bad for bullying/pecking order stuff.

lots of info on housing on kintaline farms webpage.

[tortoiseshell]

Under £100 is pushing it, as you end up with very cheap wood/fixings and it can be a false economy.

We had to knock together a cheap run at short notice when Dopey got bullied by her so called chickeny friends. So we bought a cheap house here (scroll down to the bottom picture, the square house on the left of the pic but without the run). That cost £189, and then we added a run (see here for how we did it and costings etc). It seems strong and foxes can't get in.

If your garden is 30', I strongly suggest that you find a fixed area for the chickens to go - and possibly slab the ground - otherwise you will find that your grass is trashed rapidly! And your children will be continually stepping in chicken poo! You can always let them out to free-range if you're there (if you're worried about foxes), but it just contains the chickens to one part of the garden.

[NappiesGalore]

agree on second thought that 100 is pushing it for house and run of any reasonable size

[IWishIWasMaryPoppins]

Hi - sorry to duck out: my computer crashed!

I know £100 is not great - but it will get us started and I can always add to it over time. I am not bothered about ravaged grass or chicken poo everywhere (I am a farmers' lass - I and my children revel in mud! ;) ) and I would far rather be able to move the coop about so that they have good access to all things nice and bug-like.

Good point about getting three - I shall do that!

Will check the local papers (don't know why I didn't think of that!)

[NappiesGalore]

good luck with the local papers - you never know.

here is one ebay seller. nothing for under 100 but close. and well made it looks like

this one is 139 buyitnow

walk-in run panels for 20 quid

bamtam house and run with handles for moving it

200 quid

this is 100 quid but run is an extra 80-odd quid

will post more as i come across them

[IWishIWasMaryPoppins]

I'm just about to serve tea so can't look properly now - but thank you for going to such trouble!!

[TheGreatScootini]

Thanks all!Great advice.I am going to get on to DH again.Am hopeful of having chickens by Christmas!

[pinkmagic1]

Like someone else said scour the local papers, admag, gumtree, e-bay and even freecycle. It dosn't have to be a chicken coop, you can adapt dog kennels, aviarys, large rabbit hutches etc
easily, even if you are not much good at DIY. I got mine off e-bay for well under £100, £10.50 in fact! It was sold as a large rabbit hutch and run. Its massive and really solidly built, all it needed was a lick of paint and there is more than enougth space for my 5 bantams. Just keep looking. Good luck!

[Cal61]

If you want to move round your chicken coop then we've found an Arc to be good for this and they are relatively cheap compared to other chicken coops. We've just bought one from www.chickencoops.org.uk for under £100. The website was also really useful for us as we were beginners and it had loads of good advice to help us get started.

[nickelbabe]

you could always buy a small shed and convert it. (add a couple of perches at 1ft above the ground, nest boxes on the floor and cut the door in half like a stable door for chicken access and human access)
it's the run that will cost you though. you need 10mmx10mm weldmesh and that can cost a bit.

don't get too complacent about foxes: we had one killed by a fox in daylight and the chickens live on a farm where we'd never seen a fox in 6 years of living there.

[MariaCo]

You could try ebay too - there are some really cheap chicken coops there, but then maybe the quality isn't the greatest?

[saltyseadog]

These guys are endorsed by my local poultry club and are very good value IMO. The quality looks hugely better than the mass-produced stuff being peddled on ebay. The Purton is a bit more than you wanted to spend but the quality does look good (tanalised timber, onduline roof etc.).

The Purton

Do have a look on Ebay at 'used' houses too. I just got a Flyte So Fancy house for £100, only 18 months old and original cost £380 :o. There are some bargains to be had.

[saltyseadog]

LOL I didn't notice the dates. YY random thread bumping is great :o

Hope your dd has a lovely time being a bridesmaid fio (meant to comment on your curly haired thread earlier). I'm posting under a different name but I have a dd who has no dx but has had every genetic test going (if you can work out who I am from that :)).

[AppleAndBlackberry]

This is £104 but no run: bedgebury 801