DIY Chicken Coop 

Brilliant. I'm gonna try the nestbox against the door idea. That might also take them away from the perches so they dont get pooped in. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the suggestion.

@@thesmallholdingdiaries7833 I am here 1 year late. I just built a coop/run earlier this year and surprisingly it's almost similar to your setup, Sir. I use 10 ft x 17 ft carport for the run and add a few wood studs and roof rafters because the poles are too far apart in my opinion to keep the wire netting from caving in. As for the coop, my husband got a cart years ago from a clothing dept. store that went out of business. The frame of the cart is angle steel iron but the shelving was pressed chipboard, so I gutted it and put scrap plywoods for the floor and the 3 sides. My coop is also about the same size as yours, but it opens on the front, into the run. I use pallet woods for the front. One door is smaller than the other and on the smaller door, I made a chicken door with a ramp that serves as the door. And like the suggestion above, I used a piece of fence board to contain the bedding in the coop but it can be easily lifted when it's time to clean the bedding. To secure the doors, I use eye bolt. On the 2 main doors, I screwed 1 eye bolt per door, about 1/2 inch to the edge of the door, they're parallel and about 1 1/2 inch apart, and I use trailer hitch pin (D-pin) to lock the doors. As for the ramp/door, I also use an eye bolt above the chicken door, and a hole on the ramp where the head of the eye bolt slips through and I can loop in a carabiner. Because it was a cart, still has wheels, the coop sits lower to the ground, unlike yours, so the chickens cannot go under it, but the run is covered with shade cloth and tarp so it's dry - I live in CA and it's been dry here for years. I wish I could join your facebook group but I closed my accounts years ago as I am tired of FB's busybody admin. I made the cart initially just to be a quarantine mobile coop when we had only 6 hens. That was in January. Then in March, without warning, husband brought home 6 chicks and then 2 weeks later 28 came in the mail. I had to frantically reconfigure the cart to be a brooder, but since I work full time during the day, the chicks outgrew the coop/cart really fast so I had to remove all interior fitting (for the brooder lamp and heating plate, etc.) and now it's just like yours: one room studio with a perch bar. LOL. I don't put the egg box inside though. I installed the box in the run. Some of the hens like to go to the other (1st) coop to use the nesting boxes there.