List Price: $599.99
Sale Price: $465.50
Today's Bonus: 22% Off
I looked at this many places online and the price varied greatly. I actually ordered mine on Amazon through Petco and that listing link is now gone from Amazon. Mine was far cheaper than this current listing so I'd advise googling the name of this coop or seeing if another listing pops up again if you are interested in it.
Positives: It was one of the easiest things I have put together in a VERY long time.
It's quite good looking and we needed that for our urban city coop for our 3 bantam silkies.
It has two nice perches inside.
The upper "closed window" looking area in the picture is actually a nice storage area. If you need more room for more chickens you could actually just put in half the upper floor and have plenty more room. Otherwise it's great to keep extra food, treats, bedding, etc. It goes all the way across as the "second story" of the coop and is accessed only from the outside door you see in the picture.
It has great ventilation which is advised for coops today...they need access to an outdoor run which it has. (as advised for happy chicks, we will also let them out in a grassy area twice a day too.)
It's really heavy. We get wind gusts often in storms as we are atop a hill so this makes me feel better. A frame coops blow over in wind gusts. This feels very sturdy.
You can't tell it from the picture, but it's actually really strong wiring in the window and enclosure area. I feel good about that.
Negatives:
The screw size listed in the directions is different from the picture that lists what screw sizes came with it, which was confusing but I figured it out by the number of screws when trying to decipher the directions.
The roof gets REALLY hot which means it heats up the coop. Good in cold climates but I live in Texas--It is advised that anyone in a hot climate have a coop roof that reflects the sun rather than absorbs it and this is very hot when I touch it. It absorbs it. At 100 degrees chickens can sometimes die and I've been reading enough on the issues of overheating in various breeds, slowing of egg production etc, that I wanted to take steps to cool them as much as possible. The area we are putting this in doesn't have shade so we are putting up a sun sail and I just went to the hardware store after reading how to help the coop and got 1.5" styrofoam and a couple sheets of aluminum roofing that I cut with tin sheers and nailed on the coop. That insulates and reflects the sun. They also get a mister. Hey, it's Texas. It was 105 degrees and it nearly killed me out there working in the sun yesterday for just 30 minutes. I have empathy.
I put a little plastic awning looking thing over the side window so hard rains wont come through. You can easily find many things at a hardware store to do the trick.
I was surprised to find no door that shuts the chickens away in the inside part of the coop at night for double protection; many coops have this because raccoons, dogs, etc can dig under a coop so it helps ensure that if they do get in, a door slides down from where the chickens sleep at night. You can put the ladder down but that still doesn't solve the issue with many animals so we'll want to just be double safe and add one; Update: Instead we just made the bottom part extra safe---that is too long of a story for me to recount here, but nothing is digging under this coop now
We got spring locks at the hardware store. A raccoon could have this thing open in seconds and they love the taste of chickens... an easy fix. Plus these locks started rusting after a couple months
If you are going to have 4-5 chickens I personally suggest getting the optional nesting box to go on the back to add more room. With food and water inside where they need it at night, it's just too tight a fit otherwise according to the experts...and according to our chickens. It's a tight fit...but obviously we aren't farming chickens, we are those that got a very domesticated and sweet breed and get to enjoy the eggs.
Conclusion: I had to add several things to make it the coop we personally wanted but many may not be as cautious as us about the above concerns and, if not, it's a good looking well-built coop that, even with the items we had to add, was still a bargain compared to the ugly ones we'd looked at for far more money...and there was no tax or shipping from the vendor on here when we bought ours (though that link is now gone for some reason) Google the ware chicken villa and you'll see an array of pricing and shipping costs...just compare. We are happy with it.
Note: the description on this chicken coop says it has a shingled roof. It doesn't...but it looks like the material is the same things shingles are made of. It's just flat. And it says you can attach the chick-n-pen to it for an additional run but you can't. There is no place to attach the pen to this one. It's made for some of the other coops by the same manufacturer. (the wire pen shown in the picture comes with it.)
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We purchased this for our small flock of bantams that we somehow ended up buying at Chick Days at the local Tractor Supply. We bought the nest box at the same time.The item arrived much faster than Amazon predicted only 3 business days. The outside packaging was durable with no apparent damage. Therefore I was surprised to open the box and find numerous chips, dings and a roof molding broken in 5 pieces. I reported the damage to CSN Stores, and their answer was "I regret hearing that your order arrived to you in less than pristine condition. If you should need anything else do not hesitate to contact us." I suppose I should have stopped right there, repacked everything and had the Fedex guy back to pick it up and returned it for a refund but the family was really excited about the coop so I kept it.
Assembly was fast and easy. There is a large diagram on the box itself as well as separate instructions. Screws come attached to a card, so it's hard to lose one. All you need is a Phillips screwdriver and you're set to go. Total assembly time should be less than 15 minutes, but in my case it took a few more hours to glue and clamp the broken pieces. I was unable to repair a few of the chipped pieces because I couldn't find them in the box. I suppose the chips are laying on a factory floor somewhere...
And that brings me to my main problem with the item: quality. I'm not sure what kind of wood was used but it is very light and flimsy (Poplar? Balsa?) and doesn't strike me as particularly durable. The stain was applied sloppily and unevenly. I don't see how this thing will survive more than one North Carolina winter before it falls apart. The unit is also small; it's sitting near my wellhouse and either the wellhouse is huge or the unit is tiny. I have 5 bantam chicks and I can't imagine stuffing much more into this coop without them becoming overcrowded. For regular sized chickens I don't see how you could fit more than 6. I suppose this would be great for a city/suburban location but how many of those have zoning laws permitting poultry?
As another reviewer noted the screens seem heavy-duty but they are anchored in a wood that I'm not sure would hold them if hit by a medium sized dog or raccoon determined to get in. Another reviewer recommended replacing the latches and adding a door for protection at night. I might also suggest flipping the unit on its side and installing chicken wire or some kind of fencing on the bottom to keep critters from digging under the sides.
For $200 more I could have bought an Amish made, solidly constructed coop. For just over $500 including free shipping I got this and the nest box. In my opinion I overpaid; the unit should sell for closer to $300 based on what I got.
As my mother-in-law used to say, "Would have, should have, could have." The old bat was right more often than I care to admit, and she would have been right about this product.
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I recommend this coop for anyone with a small backyard flock. It was super easy to put together.I currently have two Easter Eggers and a Buff Orpington in mine. I think it's a little cramped (but then I think about the industrial minimums for laying hens and realize they have a good bit of room in comparison), and certainly wouldn't advise putting any more than three chickens of a large breed in this coop.
We swapped out the latches to make it more difficult for a raccoon to get into the coop.
The coop is moved to a new grassy spot every four-five days. The coop is quite heavy, so you'll need two people to move it. We plan on adding wheels to the bottom to make it easier to move.
I only gave it 4 stars, as the "house" part does not have a door to close in colder weather, and it is difficult to get into to retrieve a bird if you need to.
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We bought this coop for our four pullets, knowing we'd want to modify it. We chose it because it was cheap. Assembly was easy, which was a huge relief to my husband. We also bought the double nesting box sold separately. The first thing we did was add spring-loaded hooks to keep out raccoons. We chose to add these to all four of the doors--the main door, the door to the roosting area, the lid to the nesting box, and even the door to the storage area above--since the only thing holding the floor of the storage area, which is the roof of the roosting area, in place, was gravity. A clever animal could lift up the planks and reach down for the chickens. BTW the nesting box had no latch at all, you just lift the lid, and there are the hens. We also stapled large-gauge hardware cloth onto the entire bottom of the coop. Dogs dig. Also, we screwed two 2x4's onto the bottom front and back, like runners, with handles, so we can move the coop around the garden.We had to screw down the roof panel on the right side of the coop because it was screwed down on only one side and could be lifted. We also had to add tiny shims to the roosting bars, because they jiggled around a lot and the hens wouldn't use them. We also put a screw right above the divider between the two nesting boxes, so that the floor of the nesting boxes would be held in place by it (otherwise it could be pushed up easily.)
What was good about it was its price, ease of assembly, and general design. It is not predator-proof, but the hardware cloth they used instead of chicken wire is perfect (chicken wire is not raccoon-proof--raccoons can reach in through the holes and grab a chicken, pulling it out piece by piece. Ugh.) And although it sounds like a lot of modification, it was pretty easy.
I wouldn't leave my chickens in this coop 100% of the time--they need a bit of freedom, and this would be a bit small for all four of them if they had no foraging time. I let them out in the afternoon and all day on weekends. Ironically, after all that fussing, we haven't had any raccoons that I've seen anyway. We had just moved from a few miles away where there are daily coyote sightings and tons of raccoons, but in our new neighborhood the worst we've seen is a possum. But of course the pit bulls belonging to our immediate neighbors give me cause for alarm.
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