I bought a book with some chicken coop designs but found that none of them really fit the bill for my needs. There was a space I had in mind for the chicken coop and run and it would be difficult to use one of the designs to fit the area I had without compromising the run or house. I knew what I wanted to build and the brief that I had given myself was:

1) Build a chicken house on legs

2) Needs to blend into the surroundings

3) Needs to be easy to clean out

4) Need easy access to eggs

5) Make the house as red mite proof as possible.

6) Rat and fox proof

The idea was that by putting the house on legs the chickens would have more space to run around and would also have somewhere to shelter when it rained. I started drawing up some plans but because there are so many things to think about in terms of practicality for the birds I decided to start building the framework at a particular size and then worry about the size of the pop holes, ventilation etc when I needed to worry about them.

After a few trips to the local DIY stores, I managed to get some fence posts and cut out some notches, slotted in some supports and made the framework of a box. I then cut some plywood and drilled it on to make the outside weatherproof. I cut out the pop hole and another couple of holes so that I could put wire mesh on one hole and clear plastic on the other. I then put a sliding door on both so that depending on the season and weather I could decide whether they needed more ventilation (wire mesh hole) or more warmth (hole covered with plastic sheet) using the sliding door.

The nest box was a bit of a challenge because there weren't really any instructions anywhere on the size I should make it. I ended up going round to Nigel's house, as he'd just bought some chickens, and measured his nest boxes. I then made this separately from the house and attached it with the magic of screws and batons to the door. I needed easy access for cleaning so I had attached the nest box to the door so that it was separate from the bedding area. I also needed easy access to get any eggs the chickens would lay and also to clean the nest boxes out, so I put a hinged roof on it.

Because I wanted the house to blend into the surroundings I used the same colour paint as our house and also put some featherboard on the house to make it look more rustic. I also cut out some little sheets of ply to look like roofing tiles, again to make it blend in to the character of the house. I had seen some felt tile effect roofing sheets but roofing felt harbours red mite and I was trying to prevent any parasites getting into the house as much as possible. We also coated the inside of the house with creosote substitute, which should also prevent red mite from residing in the house too much.

There were lots of little bits and pieces that needed to be done like cutting the holes in the door for access to the nesting box, a removable perch, a removable droppings board and also the run. The run itself took up a week in cutting, working out the angles, hammering in the wire mesh and eventually assembling with hinged frames on the top. We wanted to make it fox-proof and rat-proof so we dug a little deeper into the ground and buried the wire mesh so if they tried to dig they still wouldn't get in.