Urban Agriculture Center teaches residents to build chicken coops

Bobby Johnson, Laurie Florio and Jaye Wright construct a chicken coop Saturday at the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture’s workshop. The coop was built with wood from an old deck and scrap metal that was found on Paris Road. Photo by Valerie Mosley

Building a chicken coop in class

By Jessica Stephens
Missourian
March 28, 2010

Excerpt:

COLUMBIA — As Jaye Wright and Laurie Florio walked up the driveway to the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture, Billy Froescher asked them, “You here to get dirty?”

“Oh yeah!” Wright answered.

Both Wright and Florio were building a chicken coop for the first time, but so was Froescher, who led the Saturday workshop on building coops for urban hens. Froescher was no stranger to construction, but he had not built a coop before.

In February, the City Council passed an ordinance allowing city residents to keep chickens in their backyards.

Froescher modified a design called “The Movable Coop” from Organic Gardening magazine for the workshop. He said he wanted to use a basic design that required a minimal amount of scrap wood.

The coop design was simple enough for workshop attendees to construct, even for those with limited building experience. Brian Bowles, one of the participants, said the experience was unfamiliar to him, but he plans to build a coop when he and his family get hens for their Old Southwest home in about a month.

The rest of the story here.