6 Chicken Coops Built from Scratch to Inspire Your Own

Ryan Williams had been watching a handful of old cedar trees from his deer stand every fall for years, knowing they'd eventually be useful for something. When he purchased his LT15WIDE Portable Sawmill last December, the first project quickly became clear: build a mobile chicken coop of his dreams.

The cedar still harbored beetles and ants that made some material unusable, but what remained produced beautiful boards. Ryan re-engineered Justin Rhodes' popular Chickshaw 2.0 design to fit a galvanized boat trailer platform, then added automatic door controls, creating an ideal home for his chickens.

"Although inexperienced on the mill, I was able to produce some beautiful wood with a
lot of character (almost had a hard time using it just for chickens!" Ryan tells us.

What makes cedar a good choice for chicken coops?

Cedar is naturally rot-resistant and insect-repellent, which is ideal for an outdoor structure that will likely sit in wet grass and mud for years. Choosing it over pressure-treated pine means no chemical leaching near the animals or your eggs. If you're planning a similar build, The Happy Chicken Coop's complete step-by-step guide includes a detailed section on material selection. 

Jeremy Toole's summer run-in coop is a classic example of a super-efficient build. After sourcing trees locally through Facebook Marketplace and trailering them home, he let the logs rest for three months before milling. All the lumber was processed on his LX50SUPER Portable Sawmill. From there, he went straight into planning, layout, and framing on day one.

Jeremy used durable red oak for the bottom rails and framing (where ground contact and load-bearing matter most), then switched to lighter white pine for the roof, door, and trim work. The whole structure was complete and moved to the pasture by the end of day two.

The movable design is key for free-range flocks, as the coop can follow the chickens to fresh pasture rather than the birds being confined to one worn patch of ground. Free-range birds need less indoor coop space per bird than confined flocks, which makes a compact movable design like this one perfect. Jeremy estimates that he saved around $1,000 by milling his own lumber, which makes this a project well-worth doing!

Justin McKee's coop came about the old-fashioned way: a friend had trees to give away, and Justin had a truck and a Wood-Mizer LT35 Portable Sawmill. Over seven trips, he hauled every log back to his property, then milled as-needed throughout the four-week build. Justin smartly sized the lumber as the design evolved rather than pre-cutting everything upfront. 

The result is a 12×24 structure built entirely from gifted yellow pine, with an estimated $2,000 in material savings. Justin describes himself as self-taught, essentially just figuring things out as problems arise. For new builders who want a proven starting point, Construct101 offers several free coop plans with PDF downloads, including a 12×16 design that covers dimensions, cut lists, and material quantities.

The end result was a wild success for his audience of one: "The moment it was done, my wife said she wanted two more of them!"

What makes Justin's story stand out is two-fold. First, his longer vision: the coop is practice for his actual goal, milling the lumber to build his own timber-framed home.

Second, his familial past: "I will never be without a sawmill again. My dad's family survived the Great Depression owning a sawmill and growing all their own food. It felt good the day my dad told me he had never imagined me sawing lumber. He sure wished Papa was here to see e milling my own lumber to build my house." 

Wade Smith's "Coop Royale" is as much a community project as a construction one. After connecting with a property owner eight miles away through a local tree service, Wade hauled 60 salvaged logs consisting of white pine, spruce, hemlock, and black ash, in loads of 8–10 on a 16-foot equipment trailer. The LT40WIDE Portable Sawmill had just 12 hours on it when the project began.

The builder placed an initial 1,000 board-foot order milled two days before the project started, then placed custom daily orders as construction revealed new needs. Black ash ended up featured on the back wall and door; hemlock made a compelling batten strip. The 8×14 coop was paired with 20 linear feet of raised garden planter boxes — a smart way to use offcuts and smaller pieces. At 8×14 (112 sq. ft.), the coop comfortably meets recommended space guidelines for 28+ standard-sized hens.

When Mark Davis's wife decided she wanted chickens, she went big with 18 of them. So naturally, her husband Mark went big in kind. Several backyard trees were creating excessive shade, so rather than paying for removal and buying lumber separately, he dropped the trees himself and sent them through his LT40WIDE Super Hydraulic Portable Sawmill.

Three oak trees yielded roughly 1,000+ board feet of roofing, flooring, and wall material. Two yellow pine trees contributed another 600 board feet for the run frames and as concrete forms under the structure. The entire build was engineered modularly, meaning they were constructed in sections in his shop, moved to the prepared site, and assembled there. Individual panels can be swapped out if a wire screen gets damaged later.

Mark assembled the structure "green", intentionally calculating expected shrinkage into his dimensions ahead of time. It's a technique that requires forethought: Eartheasy's coop building guide covers the wood selection trade-offs in detail. A solar panel runs the lights and fans, which keeps operating costs near zero for the life of the coop.

Mark Goodson's entry represents the most substantial build in this lineup: a 12×16 chicken coop paired with a 16×10 attached run, all built from large-timber pine that was kiln-dried before construction. The kiln drying step separates this project from most--it means the structure won't twist, warp, or gap as the wood seasons over time. (Poor lumber prep is one of the most common DIY coop mistakes builders only discover after the fact.)

The trees were already on the property and were milled over a couple of days using his LT15WIDE Portable Sawmill. After kiln drying, the three-month build involved heavy timber framing to make it look the way it does today. 

The best part? Mark estimates he saved roughly $6,000 on this chicken coop by milling his own lumber. That's the kind of savings that make it well worth it.