Ikea home for chicks

It constantly amazes me how Ikea hackers find new ways to use good old Ikea goodies. Aaron Bell and wife Corinne design a cozy Ikea home for a few cute chicks.

He says, "My wife and I recently got into urban chicken farming and built a coop for them almost completely out of materials from Ikea."

We used the following Ikea products:
- Mydal bunk bed
- Trofast storage unit with shallow drawers
- Vika Oleby legs
- Gorm bottle rack

The coop frame is made from the bunk bed. We hacked the supports to make mounting the roof easier, and used the leftover slats from the top bunk for the side paneling. The storage unit with drawers is being
used for the chicken's beds, and I used more leftover wood to construct the hinged door on the side to make egg collection easier.

The front door is also leftover wood from the bed. Once the frame was assembled, we weatherproofed the frame, as the bunk bed wood comes unfinished from Ikea. Also, we laid down plywood for the floor of the
coop, using slats for support.

The bottle rack made a very nice (and cheap) ramp up to the beds, and the legs provide extra support for the heavy storage unit.

The only non-Ikea pieces we used were the mesh, plywood/beams for the roof (which is 3x coated with reflective paint in an attempt to keep the heat out), and the hardware for the hinges and latches.

We hung the feeder and waterer from the roof with a very simple washer / bolt / s-hook hack job. All told, this project took a month's worth of weekends, and was a blast to complete.