I know, I know—we’re a seed company, and this is supposed to be a gardening blog. But if you’ve poked around here at all, you probably know we’re pretty serious about homesteading, too. Eleven years ago, we set out with a dream to become more self-sufficient—raising a family, a garden, and some livestock on our own little piece of land. Today, I’m happy to report that we are living that dream—and having the time of our lives.
Like most new homesteaders, one of the first things on our wish list when we moved out here was laying hens. That first coop—a hastily converted granary—was nothing to write home about. It was covered in rotten plywood, had no windows, and held about a foot of 30-year-old oat hulls inside. But it did have one thing going for it: it already existed, which put it squarely in line with our budget. We worked quickly over a couple of days to install a few windows, some nesting boxes, and roosts (literally tree branches fastened to the wall)—all while our nearly full-grown pullets waited in a pen in the front yard.
Our Golden Duckwing Pheonix rooster, "Roo" out patrolling the property.
That coop served us well for several years before its age began to show. In time, the siding deteriorated to the point where raccoons were pulling off chunks to gain access to the inside. Pregnant with our third child, and with the other two still toddling around, I finally resigned myself to retiring our remaining flock to Grandma’s house until we were in a better season of life to build new infrastructure.
Why a Mobile Chicken Coop?
With a couple of years to think about exactly what I wanted in our next coop, I already had quite a few ideas. But then we were hit with a shock—our five-year-old daughter had contracted Lyme disease. We knew the ticks had gotten bad since getting rid of chickens, but until then, we hadn’t fully realized the cost of not having hens. It was time to jump back in.
While most homesteaders raise chickens chiefly for the fresh eggs, that was a secondary motivation for us. The primary goal of our new flock was simple: reduce the tick population.
By this point, our once-quaint acreage had expanded to accommodate our growing heirloom seed business. We couldn’t expect a single flock to roam the entire area. The solution, then, was a mobile chicken coop—one we could rotate around the farm throughout the summer to keep tick populations in check and provide fresh forage for the birds.
The Chicken Coop Design
We had learned a few things from our first coop. Foremost, natural light is important—for both heat and egg-laying efficiency. Secondly, a warm chicken is a happy chicken. Our old coop was cold, drafty, and dark—wholly insufficient for the long, cold Iowa winters. And while it was well ventilated (a little more than we’d like), the breeziness meant there was almost no temperature difference between outdoors and indoors. Our chickens were cold, and consequently had little energy for exercise or foraging. Instead of going toward eggs, most of their feed went straight into keeping them warm.
So, while I wasn’t willing to heat the new coop (free-ranging chickens need to stay acclimated to their environment), I did want it to stay relatively warm in the winter. I also wanted it to be well ventilated, because an overly tight coop brings its own set of problems. My solution became a sort of hybrid of ideas gathered from several places: a passive-solar, automatically ventilated, mobile chicken coop. To the drawing board I went.
I’ll admit, I had a little help. Fortunately, we’ve got an architect in the family. He’s young and early in his career, so I didn’t have to pay him much—he was just eager for a project. I laid out what I wanted, and he got to work designing. Here are the initial blueprints.
Architectural plans for our new mobile chicken coop.
Did I mention he’s five years old? Like I said, he works cheap. Anyway, that was our team: a forty-year-old mom and her five-year-old son, coming together to build a DIY, mobile, passive-solar, automated chicken coop. What could possibly go wrong?
The Build
I’ll save the fine details of the build for another post and just say that it went surprisingly well, considering I had minimal building experience. I do know how to stick-frame, and I have some cabinet-building experience, so I’m not a total newbie—but I’d still classify myself as a beginner. If you know how to use a drill/driver, hammer, and both circular and miter saws, you should be just fine building something like this. I’d never done tin work before, but it was easy enough to pick up—at least for the level of quality I was after.
Most of this coop was built on the ground. I framed and sheathed the underside of the platform in our shop, then had my husband help me drag it onto the rails and secure it. The long walls I framed right on the platform and stood up once they were complete. The shorter walls I built in the shop and then lifted into place. I cut the rafters to fit and—once again—got my husband’s help to lift and secure them.
Our 5-year-old nailing the sheathing to the platform. We didn't know it at the time, but we made a mistake here. More on that later.
Mobile Chicken Coop Design Concepts
Alright, so this is the part I’m really excited to talk about, because I spent a lot of time thinking through the features I wanted to incorporate into my new chicken coop. Time will tell, but I think I’ve landed on some good concepts—and the chickens seem to be enjoying them so far. Here are a few of the features we incorporated:
Mobility
As mentioned earlier, the most important requirement for our new coop was that it be mobile. To accomplish this, we used an old running gear we got from a neighboring farm. We ran a pair of sistered 2x10s to serve as rails supporting the base of the structure. The chassis has a hitch we can attach to our tractor whenever the coop needs to be moved.
Passive Solar Design
If you're not familiar with passive solar, it’s a design approach that uses the sun’s heat to help moderate the interior temperature of a building. The concept takes advantage of the fact that the sun sits higher in the sky during summer and lower during winter. By placing your windows near the top of the south-facing wall, you can have them fully illuminated in winter and fully shaded by the roof overhang in summer.
Passive solar uses the sun's natural energy to moderate the temperature of a building.
True passive solar uses a heat sink—a heavy mass, often concrete, that absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night. Since this is a mobile coop, concrete wasn’t an option. Instead, I carefully positioned the waterer so it could absorb sunlight during the day, helping delay freezing at night.
I also borrowed from passive-solar principles in the overall shape. The single-sloped roof—common in older chicken coops—serves an important purpose. Warm air rises toward the ceiling and is guided up the slope to the top vents. This helps remove hot air during summer and improves ventilation during winter.
Interior Layout
The interior layout took a fair amount of thought. The laying boxes sit on the west side of the coop so they catch the earliest sun. That little bit of morning warmth goes a long way toward preventing frozen eggs in winter.
Layout was an important consideration for this coop. Thoughtful placement of the roosts and nesting boxes keeps the hens—and their eggs—warm.
The roosts are set higher up and positioned toward the back of the coop. This lets the hens soak up the low winter sunlight—important for vitamin D production—and keeps the tallest part of the interior open for the walkway. We promised Dad that the kids and I would be the ones doing chicken chores with this new flock, but just in case he ends up picking up our slack, we didn’t want him bumping his head on the ceiling. He’s tall—and he’ll be grumpy enough already.
Windows
Windows are central to passive solar design—you can't harness sunlight if you don’t first capture it. I once read (I believe in Carla Emery’s Encyclopedia of Country Living) that a good chicken coop should have one-quarter to one-third of its south wall in windows. And if you drive around the countryside looking at old coops, that ratio appears pretty consistent. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, my window area falls squarely within that range.
Windows are a central component of passive solar. Placing them high on the south wall allows the sunshine to enter in the winter (when the sun sits low in the sky) while being excluded by the overhang in the summer.
The windows are hinged at the top so they can tilt outward when extra ventilation is needed. I prefer sash-style windows to double-hung because they can be opened from the outside and, when tilted, shed rain—even during unexpected nighttime storms. The interior sides are covered with hardware cloth to keep critters out.
There’s also a window beside the door (which ends up on the east side of the coop in the typical orientation), allowing a nice cross-breeze in summer.
Insulation
Opinions on insulating chicken coops vary widely. If you're not careful, insulation can cause real problems with moisture and mold. But given our harsh winters (sometimes dipping to -20°F), I was willing to take the risk. After all, there’s little point in using passive solar if your heat immediately escapes through the walls.
My solution was mineral wool insulation. Because it’s inorganic, it isn’t a suitable substrate for mold and performs better in humid environments. It also resists moisture and dissipates it naturally through its porous structure—so long as you don’t moisture-proof both sides of the wall which admittedly, in tinning the interior, I kind of did. Still, I think this was a good choice because I'm combatting moisture sources on both sides of the wall.
Ventilation
Ventilation was one of my biggest concerns. Coop moisture is inevitable—chickens are pooping in there—and you need a way to dry it out. But too much ventilation, and the coop becomes drafty and cold.
My solution was thermal coil foundation vents.
These foundation vents utilize thermal coils to control the amount of airflow. The vents slowly open as the temperatures rise—just what we need for a comfortable, yet well-ventilated coop.
As sophisticated as that sounds, they’re surprisingly simple and inexpensive (I paid $27 each). Each vent has louvers that open or close based on temperature. A metal coil mounted to the louvers expands as the air warms, gradually opening the vent. They begin opening around 40°F and are fully open at 70°F. On very cold days, they’re completely closed—which is fine, since minimal evaporation occurs in those conditions.
Up high on the front of the coop, on the underside of the overhang, are six mesh-covered vents that allow warm, moist air to escape. An HVAC guy once explained to me that exhaust airflow is just as important as intake. As much as we’ve all tried cooling our gas-station coffee by blowing into that tiny hole, it doesn’t work because the vent is too small. So the total surface area of these top vents is actually a bit larger than that of the foundation vents at the back.
The vents located on the underside of the overhang allow hot air from the interior of the building to escape. This air movement helps to pull fresh air in through the vents at the back of the coop.
Most of the ventilation work is done by the front vents (and the windows). When the sun shines, it warms the air inside the coop. That warm air rises, moves along the ceiling pitch, and exits through the top vents. This creates a slight negative pressure that draws fresh air in through the foundation vents.
Manure Handling
The placement of those foundation vents—near the floor, just above the dropping pit—is intentional. Airflow over the manure helps evaporate moisture and reduce ammonia, creating a healthier environment for the birds and a more pleasant choring experience for their keeper.
Positioning the intake vents just above the dropping pit causes air to flow over the manure, allowing it to dry out more quickly and improving the air quality of the coop.
Speaking of chores, there are few things I dislike more than cleaning the chicken coop. Our old coop had an open floor that the chickens walked all over in winter. They’d pack the manure down into a thick crust that was slow to dry and a terrible pain to remove. Come spring, I’d be in there with a long-handled scraper, trying to free it from the concrete—not a fun job.
I knew something needed to change in the new coop. I found the solution in a book (title forthcoming in the build post) that described using a dropping pit to catch manure and protect it from trampling. This helps the manure dry out more quickly and makes it much easier to clean. Naturally, our manure pit sits beneath the roosts and the feeder/waterer area, where the chickens spend most of their time.
The dropping pit keeps the chickens from trampling over their manure. It is positioned under the roosts and feeder/waterer area.
It lifts out of the way and secures to the wall when we clean. With one easy motion, we can scoop the loose, dry droppings out the man door and into a wheelbarrow. Pretty slick, huh?
Dropping pit tucked away in cleaning position. First the roosts are lifted and pinned to the ceiling. Then, the floor is folded up and fastened to the wall.
I have some more pictures showing how the whole thing gets tucked away for cleaning day. There were a lot of considerations that went into designing the droppings pit. Comment below if you're interested in hearing about that—perhaps I'll give the dropping pit its own post.
The Doors
We constructed this coop on the cheap—most of the materials were salvaged or already on hand. Right down to the hinges on the pop door, we hunted, scraped, and shoestringed wherever we could. The hinge design you see here is one my husband came up with using two old gate hinges salvaged from a neighbor’s junk pile. When open, the door sits flush against the building, held tight by a strong magnet we scrapped from an old Papa John’s pizza delivery sign. Like I said—we shoestringed.
Custom hinge design fabricated by my husband. The J-trim around the pop door presented a challenge—there wasn't a solid edge to mount a conventional hinge. This was our solution.
Here's a closeup of the hinge in a closed position (the magnet had not yet been installed in this picture):
Backside of the hinge in a closed position.
The man door was also used. We found it on Marketplace for $40, which was a little more than I wanted to spend, but I needed a solid wood door. It had to be trimmed down six inches to fit under the lower roof height.
Above the man door, we installed a motion sensor solar light to help light up the stoop when doing winter chores.
A motion sensor solar light illuminates the stoop when doing morning and evening chores on those short winter days.
The Cost
As mentioned before, we wanted to build this coop as affordably as possible. Most of the materials were things I got for free or dragged out of the barn. The running gear was given to us, and much of the lumber and tin was salvaged from old buildings on our farm. The only things I really splurged on were the windows, the rockwool insulation, and some metal trim to match the salvaged pieces.
Most of the materials for this coop were salvaged. This rusty tin was repurposed from an old building. We love the weathered patina, which fits right in with the rest of our 1880s farmstead.
We did have to buy a few additional materials—plywood for the floor and ceiling, 1×6 girts for the steel siding, a handful of 2×4s, and the usual hardware and accessories (vents, window hinges, latches, chicken wire, etc.).
All told, I estimate we have about $2,500 in the coop. The bigger-ticket items were the steel trim ($550), windows ($250), and insulation ($400), with the remaining balance going toward the miscellaneous materials listed above.
The Timeline
All in all, the build took about six weeks of actual working time—mostly nights and the occasional weekend. This isn’t my primary trade, so it took me longer than it would a skilled carpenter. I started in October of 2024 and had it dried in within about a month.
The boy and I admiring the finished coop. Sure, it was more work than I expected—it always is—but having him see a project go from concept to reality makes it all worth the effort.
Then winter arrived, followed by spring planting and summer field work. By the time fall rolled around (usually my slow season), it was time to begin homeschooling my son—the architect—which took more time than I expected. Thankfully, my husband helped pull me over the finish line by buttoning up the interior and installing the roosts. Had I done all that myself, it probably would have taken twice as long.
Would I Build It This Way Again?
In short—yes, mostly. The coop has performed well, and I’m happy with how it turned out. But there are a few things I’d tweak if I were starting from scratch.
I used stick framing because it was what I knew and because it allowed me to build the coop in pieces light enough for me to move around on my own. In hindsight, though, a post-frame design would have been more efficient and lighter. I originally planned to block out the studs so I’d have horizontal surfaces to screw the tin to, but because my stud spacing wasn’t exactly uniform, that turned into more trouble than it was worth. I ended up nailing girts to the outside instead—which added both cost and weight. Inside, we simply ran the tin sideways and called it good.
Because of the stud framing, the interior tin was run sideways. Here the dropping pit platform is shown in its stowed position.
If I built this coop again, I’d also make it a foot or so shorter. I wanted it to be husband-friendly, and he certainly appreciates the headroom, but that extra height makes the coop a little sketchy to move. On flat ground it’s no big deal, but on our hillsides, it adds a bit more “excitement” on moving days than I’d prefer.
And finally—my frugality bit me early on. We had some sheets of ½-inch plywood lying around, and I convinced myself they’d be strong enough for the floor. Once they were nailed down, it became clear they were not. The floor felt spongy. In the end, I had to buy ¾-inch plywood and nail it over the top. I don’t love that decision, but it had to be done. If I were starting over, I’d buy the right materials from the beginning and avoid doing the job twice.
The build wasn't without mistakes, but all-in-all we're happy with how it turned out.
How's It Working?
As I write this, it’s 21 degrees outside and we’ve just received several inches of snow—yet the inside of the coop is a toasty 54 degrees. Admittedly, we’re having ideal conditions for passive solar today: it’s clear, perfectly still, and mid-day, so the sun is shining directly through the south windows. As you might expect, that temperature differential narrows on cloudy days, when it’s windy, and of course at night. Even under less-than-ideal conditions, though, I’ve found the coop is consistently at least 10 degrees warmer than the outside temperature—and usually more.
Today, the humidity inside the coop is sitting around 75%. It’s a little higher than I’d like, but not unexpected. We received 50-mph northern winds as the winter storm blew in, and ultimately decided to block off the foundation vents with foam until the weather settles. Closing those vents meant sacrificing some ventilation. The front vents are still open, but the air isn’t moving through the coop the way it normally does. We’ll play it by ear and adjust as needed.
And while the chickens are enjoying the warmth, my favorite feature so far has been the dropping pit. I’ve never been so excited to see chicken poop—there’s something oddly satisfying about that clean bed of straw sprinkled with neat, undisturbed droppings. It makes me a little happier than it probably should.
I did resist the urge to take pictures, though—still a little too soon after the photoshoot for my gardening with rabbit manure post last summer. I don’t want to become known as the lady who puts poop pictures on the internet.
Final Thoughts
When we first set out to build this coop, it wasn’t really about chickens at all. It was about reclaiming a little piece of the self-sufficient life we’d dreamed of eleven years ago—one where our land, our family, and our daily work all braid together into something steady and good. A mobile coop won’t change the world, but it has changed our little corner of it. The ticks are down, the eggs are plentiful, and the kids have a project they can proudly call their own.
This build stretched us—in skill, in patience, and occasionally in plywood thickness—but seeing it finished, and seeing our birds thriving inside it, makes every late night and head-scratching moment worth it. It’s warm, it’s functional, and it fits our farm in a way only a DIY project ever truly can.
If you’re toying with the idea of building your own coop—mobile, passive solar, or otherwise—I hope this gives you a sense of what’s possible. You don’t need to be a carpenter. You don’t need perfect tools or perfect plans. You just need a problem to solve, a willingness to learn, and maybe a five-year-old architect cheering you on.
Here’s to warm chickens, fewer ticks, and the make-do spirit that keeps homesteading exactly what it ought to be.
Thinking about bringing your own flock home—or improving the one you already have?
If you’re ready to take the next step toward a more self-sufficient homestead, check out our post Growing Your Own Chicken Feed: 10 Plants to Consider. It’s full of practical ideas to keep your birds healthy, busy, and well-fed—straight from your own garden.
