Vanessa Shares How Lots of People’s’ Trash Made a Cute Coop for Her Ducks

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in their photographs and stories. Today we are featuring Vanessa and her goose coop.

Hello!
I saw that you were looking for submissions about chickens…well…this is actually about ducks, but it’s a super neat coop that we built for free! Technically, it was about $10, but it was for paint 🙂

I saw a documentary about how cruel the egg industry can be. We never bought store eggs again. Sadly, the lady we were getting our eggs from sold her birds. We were out of luck. We really wanted to start raising our own eggs. My husband and I decided on duck eggs because they are bigger and we think they taste better.

After looking at all the coop kits online and in stores, we didn’t really like any of them. This spurred us to build our own from scratch. I didn’t want to spend too much on it so we decided to use all recycled materials. For quite awhile, we searched Craigslist for all the needed supplies.

We got super lucky and found someone who was tearing down a tree fort in their backyard. We even found some styrofoam insulation! We loaded all the wood we thought we would need in the back of the pickup and off we went!
I was super intimidated by the idea of using power tools and measuring things that had to be pretty exact. It didn’t turn out to be too bad and only took us 3 days to build. I even went to Home Depot and got some “Oops Paint” for the outside.

Over a year later, it is still standing and gets used by the ducks every day.

I built a silly “window” out of scraps. I think it looks like a cartoon coop.

We put hinges (found in a drawer) on the front side. This way the whole thing opens for easy cleaning and egg removal. We used an old banner someone was tossing out to make the roof waterproof. Lots of peoples’ trash made one cute coop 🙂

~ Vanessa

If you would like to have your garden, chicken coop, pantry or something you’ve made featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, here’s what I’m looking for:

• Your Garden Pictures and Tips – I’d especially like to see your garden set ups, growing areas, and know if you are starting seeds indoors this year. If so,  show me some picture of how you are going about it.
• Your Pantry Pics – Submit at least 5 HIGH QUALITY pictures of your pantry/fridge/cabinets, as well as a short blurb {at the very least} about you and your food habits.
• Your Chicken and Chicken Related Stories – Coops, Chicks, Hen’s, Roosters, Eggs, you name it. If it clucks, send us some pictures to share with the world.
• Cool Arts & Crafts – Made from your very own hands with detailed {and well photographed} pictures and instructions.
• Your pictures and stories about your pets. The more pictures and details the better.
• Garage Sale, Thrift Store and Dumpster Diving pictures and the stories behind the treasures you found including how much you paid for them.

If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com.

Go  HERE for the official rules.