ILLUSTRATION: DAVID STILES
The rectangular coop kit is less expensive because it doesn t use pre-bent hoops, and because the white pipe is less costly. Total price should be about $300.
DAVID STILES
A drop-down door on the coop end can be opened to let the chickens out, and offers nest box access.
DAVID STILES
Adobe Stock/spirenko
Fowl Stuff is a Michigan company that has designed an injection-molded cover that adapts 3- and 5-gallon pails for use as nesting boxes.
FOWL STUFF
Having a few laying hens in the backyard has almost become the icon of today’s self-sufficiency movement. Birds kept in a portable chicken coop on pasture provide delicious, inexpensive eggs, and eggs from birds that get plenty of grass, bugs and seeds to eat are better for you than store-bought eggs (read the results of our egg nutrition testing in The Good Egg). Hens are great converters of kitchen waste into valuable manure for the garden, and every chicken owner we know takes a lot of pleasure in j