The coop was built on the cheap, with as much salvaged building material as we could find. The inside coop is quite cozy: a corner of the garage is fenced off with 4x4s and chicken wire. A cinder-block-sized hole was punched in the garage wall to create a double-door exit to the chicken yard. A window screen mounted on hinges serves as the entrance for humans.
A former storage closet holds the nesting shelves. An overhead shoplight set on a timer provides 12 hours of light for the inside coop. This winter, a heat lamp was installed to provide warmth. A thick layer of straw helps insulate the chickens from the cold cement floor. Cleaning the coop is fairly easy, and the soiled straw makes great garden mulch.
The outdoor coop contains a swing for the chickens that Naomi's mother made from pieces of an old bent-wood rocker. Occasionally, the chickens are given run of the garden adjacent to the coop. They love to crouch under a large rhubarb plant and eat the leaves.
Now that winter has come, the chickens go outside less frequently, but they apparently don't mind the cold. For the most part, our winter has been mild this year, except for a few days of below-zero weather. Several days in January have reached 40 degrees (which is warm by Pocatello winter standards).
Ruth posted a comment about predators. The original plan was for the chickens to be in my yard, but because my yard is adjacent to the hills on the west side of Pocatello, it is rife with predators: skunks, coyotes, and snakes, not to mention a zillion neighbor cats and roving dogs. Even in Amanda's and Naomi's safer neighborhood, we dug down about 18 inches and buried chicken wire, anchored by cinder blocks, to discourage predators from digging under the coop. The outdoor coop is inside the fenced garden, which is inside the surrounding yard's fence, so large predators such as dogs are triply discouraged.
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