When we set out to take up chicken keeping, we knew that our mountain environment would require some extra work to be successful. A lot of folks have asked me about our setup, so I thought I’d share what we did to predator-proof and make our chickens comfortable in their high-altitude environment!

We have virtually every predator in Colorado in our backyard.  We’ve seen black bears, coyotes, foxes and even mountain lion tracks.  We also have a pair of nesting red tailed hawks right out back, as well as eagles and osprey.  So our fat chickens look like a free lunch, pretty much.  After lots of research, we decided to build our own coop and run, to make it a bit beefier than the standard coop.  We knew it needed to withstand everything short of (and ideally, including) a bear.  We live at almost 9,000ft, so it also can be very cold here in the winter.  This last year was very mild, but usually we will have a couple stretches of -20F temperatures in the winter and, of course, we get a pretty big snow load.  We needed to insulate our coop so the chickens wouldn’t freeze to death.

The first step was to find a coop style that would look good.  We found some free plans to use on the Home Depot Blog.  Our coop is a bit smaller, as we cut the length in half.  We also used bigger materials.  Instead of 1×2 boards, we used 2x4s and 4x4s instead of 2x4s.  Suffice to say our coop is heavy as hell and is pretty burly.  We also added a window that opens/closes for added light and venting in the coop.

Once we got the main frame put together, we lined the floor of the coop with some linoleum scraps, to make it easy to clean.  We lined the inside of the coop with 1″ foam insulation and then put a layer of very thin plywood over the top, so the chickens wouldn’t peck out all the insulation, because chickens are smart like that.  I insulated the floor from the underside of the coop as well.

Once all the insulation was in, we used 1/4″ hardware cloth to line the vents and prevent small predators from creeping in under the eaves. In the winter, I plug the vents with foam pipe covers to keep the snow from blowing in.  We made the roof covering out of tin, instead of shingles, so the snow would slide off.  It works great in the winter!

After we built the coop, we started working on the run.  We are lucky enough to have a covered shed off the back of our barn, which made a perfect spot for our chicken run.  We used the beefy option of 1/4″ hardware cloth for the walls.  It turns out, chicken wire doesn’t do shit to keep predators out.  It only keeps the chickens IN.  Who knew?  We also dug hardware cloth under the ground about 2ft around the run, to prevent predators from trying to dig their way in.

The feeder stays inside the coop to help avoid attracting predators to the run.  Because of our cold temps and snow load, we have a heated waterer and we put sheets of plywood around the run in the winter to keep the snow out. There’s much debate out there about coop heaters.  Most folks say to avoid at all costs to prevent a coop fire.  You also don’t want your chickens to get acclimated to having a heater, because if it goes out they could all die.  We just felt having such a small flock, it’s too cold here in the winter.  We got a coop-safe panel heater that we keep on a timer.  It’s only on at night when it’s sub-zero, to prevent the chickens from getting too acclimated. A wireless thermometer mounted inside the coop lets me keep an eye on the temperature in there!

That’s our Colorado mountain chicken coop!  So far, it’s worked awesome.  The chickens stay warm enough in the winter and are well protected.  So far, we haven’t seen any sign that predators have tried to get in, though our dog still stares longingly in the run. We barely have to shovel the run out in the winter and we remove the plywood boards in the summer so the chickens get plenty of light. Happy chickens mean lots of eggs!