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Winter Chicken Coop Care, Pt. 2: How chickens keep themselves warm — and how...
This is the second in a four-part series on preparing your backyard chickens and coop for cold weather. Most standard laying hens are quite cold hardy (check this handy breed chart). Just look at their...
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Winter Chicken Coop Care, Part 3: Outfit your chicken coop for the winter.
This is the third in a four-part series on getting your chickens and coop ready for the winter. Now we turn to the coop itself. In mild climates, chickens need only basic protection from the elements...
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Winter Chicken Coop Care, Part 4: Heating your chicken coop.
This is the last in a four-part series on getting your chickens and coop ready for the winter. Once you’ve done everything else, you may find that you still want to provide extra warmth in your coop....
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New nipple waterer for chickens
Several months ago on the advice of a customer, I decided to make a DIY nipple waterer for our backyard chickens. Our birds were just chicks at the time, and keeping them supplied with fresh, clean...
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Discount code for non-toxic wood treatment and stains from Timber Pro UV
For visitors to TheGardenCoop.com, I’ve arranged a discount from Portland’s own Timber Pro UV on their non-toxic wood treatments and stains. In particular, their Internal Wood Stabilizer product is...
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How to wrap your chicken coop for the winter
For the past few winters, I’ve wrapped our Garden Coop in plastic sheeting to keep driving rain and snow (mostly rain here in the Pacific Northwest) out of the run area. I’d love to say I do this for...
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Poultry nipples for making your own chicken waterer
In addition to fully assembled chicken waterers, we’re now also offering the push-in poultry nipples you need to make your own. These are the same push-in style nipples we use to make our waterers,...
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Growing up with chickens: 5 things city kids learn by keeping a backyard flock
If you frequent Coop Thoughts, chances are you caught this recent coop-building story by Morgan Emrich. I love his take on things, so I invited him to author a post about his experience keeping...
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NEW: Chick Brooder Cages
I’m gonna miss hearing the “cheep, cheep, cheep. . . “ of baby chicks this spring. Our current backyard flock is still healthy and laying strong, so it could be another couple years before we get to...
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How to make a simple nipple waterer for your chick brooder
In this tutorial, I show you how to make a clean, efficient nipple waterer for your chicks using a push-in poultry nipple and a couple of easy-to-find items. If you’d rather not do this yourself, you...
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Keeping your New Year’s resolution to keep chickens
You’ve made it your New Year’s resolution to finally get chickens. Good for you. Chickens are low-maintenance animals that give so much in return. On top of the amazing compost, free entertainment,...
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Make It Your Own: Nate’s Winterized Wisconsin Garden Coop
With extremely cold weather dipping into the U.S. this winter, I thought I’d share some detailed notes I got from a customer in Galesville, Upper Wisconsin. He’s taken several steps to winterize his...
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How to predator proof the open floor of The Garden Ark mobile chicken coop
I’ve been working for some time on a solution to predator-proof the open floor of The Garden Ark mobile chicken tractor. The challenge has been finding a way to secure the floor without closing it off...
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How to heat your chickens’ nipple waterer in the winter
Just a quick post to share what we did last winter to keep our chickens’ nipple waterer from freezing. We bought an immersible birdbath heater (see our Buyer’s Guide for more details). Because the...
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Chickens roosting in the run at night rather than the henhouse?
Three of our coop designs (The Garden Loft, The Garden Coop, and The Garden Ark) have an integrated henhouse and run. So your chickens are free to move between the two areas as they wish. (You can add...
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