What's the best way to repurpose a swing set as a chicken coop?

Tim32395782
by Tim32395782
I would like to enclose the entire playhouse/swingset (shown in the picture) inside a fence/chicken wire. The playhouse will serve as their new coop and the sandbox will be for their dust baths. I'm just not sure where to start and am open for additional ideas.
  4 answers
  • Jaynie Jaynie on Jun 21, 2018

    Wow. What a cool space! Know any handy friends? Some framing and some chicken wire can go a long way. The chickens will need a shady area and you'll need a door to go in and out.... Build some laying shelves/boxes for your girls.

  • Sharon Sharon on Jun 21, 2018

    I would make some doors on the lower sides of the house part for cleaning, and to put the roosts inside and so you can retrieve eggs. Just drill a hole in the top corner, and use a jig saw to cut the door out, then add some hinges, and a latch or you could buy one of those automatic chicken doors. I saw where a guy used 5 gal. buckets for nesting boxes, just cut the bottoms off, and sand the edge. You would want to add a couple large wooden rods inside for them to roost on too. Then I would remove the plastic slide and make a simple wood ramp with little cross pieces of wood they can walk down from that little porch area into the wired in yard. I would cut a couple windows covered with screen, and again put hinges on the cut out wood to be able to close them in cold weather, and a latch to hold them open in hot weather.

    To add chicken wire, I would take down those tilted pieces of wood on the left, and put in 2 uprght posts to create a large rectangular area leading to front of coop house. Or you could simply use the horizontal bar and make a chicken wire netted tent. I would dig down 3-4" to insert the wire so no animals like weasels, foxes etc can dig in. Use some of those big wire staples they use for landscape fabric to fasten to the ground. Wire in the base of the chicken house too. You will have to make a doorway with wood framing so you can get in when needing to clean the chicken yard and house. Be sure to put in an automatic watering system and feeder, I would under the little coop. Look on YouTube how to build one.... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chicken+coop+with+automatic+water%2Ffeed+system+ be sure to leave an area underneath for them to get out of the sun, add a couple wooden rods across those posts for roosting.

    There are many wonderful chicken coop ideas on YouTube.... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chicken+coop+build

  • Suzanne O'Brien Suzanne O'Brien on Jun 22, 2018

    Depending on local predators, I'd use hardware cloth dug in about a foot underground and around the lower 2-3 feet of the coop run. We used goat wire, run vertical and horizontal, to make small holes. Lined that with chicken wire, with hardware cloth at the bottom. At every overlapping seam, we ran straight wire to prevent gaps, where animals could slip through the layers to get to our chooks. But, we have raccoons, ringtail cats (they can squeeze through a 2X4 opening), possums, coyotes and fox on our property.