Here are some pictures of the first collapsible coopette for your viewing pleasure – after which I’ll describe how I put these things together ?<\/p>\n The first one (shown above) was the initial implementation of my idea…in which we decided hinging the access door on the top is less than ideal, and we discovered we need 3 hasps to hold the ends on rather than 2.<\/p>\n Materials used:<\/p>\n When folded-up, the sides collapse to ~3″ thick. The ends are about 2″ thick, too. <\/p>\n Total space needed against the side of your garage\/shed\/etc to store the coopette when you aren’t actively using it is ~3′ x 8′ x 6″, or slightly more than a folding table ?<\/p>\n Construction was very simple – I made the sides a smidge over 36″ wide so that I could attach the hardware cloth without trimming for more than length ?<\/p>\n The ends have a pair of 36″ long boards cut into trapezoids with 30\u00b0 ends, and a butted ~30″ trapezoid, again with 30\u00b0 ends (see photo for detail). The butt joint is secured via stapled hardware cloth (wrapped around from the outside to the inside (see photo), and a small covering inside screwed into both upright pieces. I used various pieces of scrap for those butt joint covers<\/p>\n Wrapping the hardware cloth around the ends was the single most time-consuming (and painful!) aspects of construction. Start with a 36″x36″ piece, laid-out square to the bottom of the end. Clamp in place (these 3″ spring clamps<\/a> from Harbor Freight were a true godsend), and staple as desired … I may<\/em> have gone a little overboard on the stapling front ?. On the second coopette, I relied more on sandwiching a little extra fence picket material to capture the hardware cloth, and a little less on staples.<\/p>\n Prototype 1 was quick-and-dirty – too much stapling, shouldn’t have had the door hinge at the top, needed to be more stable (sandwich the hardware cloth better)<\/p>\n And two hasps holding the ends on is not sufficient – you need three (one more-or-less at each corner) to really keep the end locked well, and to enable easy movement<\/p>\n Prototype 2 was not as<\/em> dirty … but moving from fence pickets to 5\/4 would be preferable<\/p>\n Likewise, wish I had put enough support at the bottom to be able to put some casters on at least one end to facilitate moving around the yard (to prevent killing-out the grass underneath)<\/p>\n from antipaucity https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/2021\/09\/17\/a-frame-coopettes-for-raising-chicks\/ We raise chickens. For the last few years, we’ve only had layers – and they’ve all been full-grown by the time they arrived at our home. This year, we decided to buy some chicks because our layers are starting to age-out of being able to lay, and we’re interested in trying our hand at raising …\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-05-19.34.49-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-06-18.05.50-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-06-18.06.02-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-06-18.06.11-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-06-18.06.20-1-1024x448.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-06-18.06.20-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2021-08-06-18.07.50-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Lessons Learned <\/h2>\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/21-09-17-10-03-32-4169-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/21-09-17-10-03-36-4170-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/antipaucity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/21-09-17-10-03-43-4171-1-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>What would I do differently in the future?<\/h2>\n
\n
\nvia IFTTT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Continue reading a-frame coopettes for raising chicks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[95],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-43192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blih","tag-antipaucity"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43193,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43192\/revisions\/43193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43192"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=43192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}