Chicken coop

Here’s the story of our beautiful and really unique chicken coop!

I wanted to make an experiment in true natural building – using only materials, means, and methods readily available within a very short distance of the building site. Like 100 or 200 meters! So no nails, no cement, no wood or stones brought in from somewhere far, no metal. Nothing but what we could draw from the incredible nature around us and a bit of creativity.

It all started with a few preliminary design sketches:

We wanted a structure that could support itself easily without having to dig deep holes we would need to fill with cement (or having to come up with some other solution). It also needed to be sturdy and strong to last a long time and to resist the frequent Costa Rican earthquakes and tropical extremes – torrential rains, strong winds, etc. A pyramid-like design is great for all these considerations.

We chose a site that’s gently sloping and in a good location on the farm for our chickens to be able to roam free and pasture all day. With a couple of shovels, pics, and a wheelbarrow we started flattening an adequate area:

And this is what it looked like after a couple of days of work:

Since there were many melina trees all around the site, we naturally chose to use this beautiful white wood to build the structure of the coop. Absolutely all the wood used is from trees that were either already fallen, or about to fall (dry) – all within meters of the site.

Here’s what melina wood looks like:

Since we have a big bamboo grove about 150 meters from the chicken coop site, we decided to use bamboo for the roof structure. So we harvested a whole bunch of bamboo and set it to dry to cure it while we worked on building the wood structure:

drying bamboo

the basic structure

finishing up the wood structure

Here’s the part where we used the bamboo – you can see how using materials that are readily available on-site makes a structure which then blends perfectly with the surrounding nature and landscape:

For the roof I wanted to experiment with a very simple palm roof using palm leaves readily available from the many palm trees on our farm. So we harvested some palm leaves and started putting the roof together:

The way we did the palm roof is fairly easy and very beautiful, but not totally rain-proof…

For the floor we used split bamboo with a design that is easy to clean and that allows the chicken’s poop to fall down to an area where it can be collected for compost.

To prevent erosion and prepare the grounds for a future drainage and rain catchment system we lined the surrounding walls with split bamboo:

After some more work, we had a working chicken coop with doors, laying areas, and lots of details! Check it out:

Finally, here come the chickens!

We’re using a breed of chickens that are used to being free and aren’t degenerated. No commercial laying hens used to living enclosed and unable to even reproduce themselves. The process of caring for “real” chickens that are truly pastured is a fascinating one and we’ll make sure to share it here on the blog so stay tuned!

Our chickens have been here for just a few days but they already know to come back to the coop at night to stay safe from wildlife (and to lay their eggs there) after long days spent roaming around eating insects and all kinds of plants and scraps.

We’ve got nine hens and a rooster – with more to come as our little flock continues to grow organically over the next few weeks.