The Long Road to a Coop That Actually Works

When I built my first large cedar chicken coop, I wasn’t just building a coop. I was testing an idea.

From the beginning, my goal wasn’t just about a structure — it was about creating a complete, functional system. Ultimately, I wanted to produce a coop kit that could be produced affordably, easily assembled, and solve several persistent problems at once: daily cleaning, waste management, ventilation, and access to fresh greens.

That cedar coop was my proving ground.

The Original Vision (and Why It Didn’t Work)

The cedar coop was designed around three integrated concepts:

• Internal grazing beds, so birds could harvest greens themselves
• Raised gardening integration, allowing plants and animals to work together
• A compo-roost system, where waste could be directed, composted, and managed intentionally

In my head and on paper, it was an elegant concept. I was merely combining a lot of different techniques chicken keepers across the country were already implementing in various ways.

After three months of intensive work, I ended up with a beautiful coop for my own back-yard AND the realization that wasn't going to work as a I had hoped. Instead of an elegant solution I had:

• Complex joinery = high kit cost
• Expensive materials = high kit costs
• Heavy Materials = high shipping costs
• High labor time = consumer frustration

But this realization was actually a win because now I knew my original idea:

• Wasn’t scalable
• Wasn’t affordable
• Wasn’t simple enough to become a kit.

So for the time being I gave up and turned my attention to a different focus: creating several new autosexing breeds of chickens with high production and pretty eggs.

Enter the Hoop Coops (and a New Set of Problems)

Working closely with my birds every day gave me first-hand experience on how housing, workflow, and daily maintenance either support or sabotage the process of developing genetics. I needed more coops, FAST! And for fast coops, I turned to the incredible "hoop coop" design: the easiest type of coop to build that will contain small flocks for breeding purposes without breaking the bank. 

And in the process of building breeding infrastructure that actually worked, I found myself circling back to the question of coop design again, but this time with clearer priorities and fewer compromises.

There was no doubt in my mind that hoop structures had massive potential. They are:

• Strong, with minimal materials needed to construct them 
• Adaptable to different coop sizes (just add another cattle panel!)
• Far more affordable (roughly $350-400/coop in materials)
  

I began building a row of hoop coops, experimenting with layout, workflow, and daily use with each new coop I built.

But while they solved many structural problems, new limitations appeared.

Unfortunately, most hoop coops:

• Lack proper, controllable ventilation, especially for cold northern winters and hot summers
• Are still difficult for the average person to build well (don't even get me started on how many types of doors I tried building!)
• Don’t integrate grazing in a meaningful way (unless you have space or time to move them every day, which I don't)
• Cleaning under the roosts is still necessary in spite of the deep litter system. 

I knew the answer wasn’t another workaround. I simply needed to have a different way of thinking about the entire envelope of the coop.

The Breakthrough: Designing From the Roof Down

As the seasons shifted from warmish fall days and cool nights to decidedly COLD nights, I had a problem: Too much moisture was buiding up inside the coop and on very cold nights the interior roof ended up making rain inside the coop. The area over the roost wasn't as bad because I'd placed a layer of SmartShield insulation, and that got me to thinking:

What if the roof itself did more of the work?

Instead of starting with walls or floors, I started thinking about how I could utilize the roof as the solution to the problem each season presents: extreme cold or extreme heat. And that shift unlocked everything.

On Thanksgiving Day while everyone else was making dinner, my mind started thinking about creating a Hoop Coop kit that offered a ventilated roof system with a built-in air-gap.

The idea for my patent-pending Supernova Roof System™ came from re-thinking the shape entirely. I kept coming back to the simplicity of the cattle-panel hoop, but I also knew it couldn’t handle insulation or ventilation on its own.

What finally clicked was the idea of placing a Gothic arch over the parabolic cattle-panel arch, letting each shape do what it does best. The inner arch provides strength and scalability. The outer arch manages weather, insulation, and airflow. The space between them becomes an asset instead of a problem.

That moment was the turning point—when the roof stopped being a limitation and became the system that made everything else possible.

• Naturally creates thermal buffering through a built-in air gap
• Actively manages airflow using a low-energy, integrated fan—ventilating heat in summer, excess moisture and ammonia in winter, all without creating drafts
• Scales easily across multiple coop sizes by adding additional cattle panels
• Is designed as an integral part of the Queen of Hoop Coops kit, not an afterthought

Once the roof problem was finally solved, the rest of the system could fall into place.

The Tilt ’N Slide™ Insta-clean Compo-roost System

While experimenting with various roost set-ups I decided to try putting a slick, slanted poop board under the roost that would allow the poop to slide outside of the coop into a compost pile. It was a concept I'd already had, but not yet tried, and my quick set-up proved the idea worked! 

So I incorporated the Tilt ’N Slide™ into my Queen of Hoop Coop Kits design via a sloped, PTFE-coated fiberglass surface that sits beneath roosts and lets gravity handle waste management.

Instead of scraping boards or wrestling with liners:

• Waste slides down the tarp and out of the back of the coop through a narrow opening, directly into a compost pile
• The surface stays clean, or can be easily rinsed if needed
• Composting becomes intentional and automatic 

For the first time, the compo-roost concept actually worked the way it was always meant to, not as a hack, but as an integrated part of the design.

Reach-Through Grazing: Letting the Birds Do the Harvesting

One of the problems I kept running into—across every coop style I tried—was that grazing systems were either impractical or labor-intensive. Trays had to be moved or replated. Greens had to be cut and carried. Doors had to be opened and closed and access to a secure run area large enough not to get decimated had to be created. OR, the coop had to be moved every day, which requires time and a lot of space, neither of which I have. What was meant to be “natural” quickly became yet another chore.

So instead of asking how people could bring greens to their chickens, I flipped the question:

What if the chickens could harvest their own greens, without leaving the coop?

The Queen of Hoop Coop design integrates reach-through grazing beds along both long sides of the structure. Living greens are grown just outside the coop envelope, protected from being scratched out and trampled into oblivion, while the birds access them through narrow openings sized to allow heads and necks—but not full bodies—to pass through.

The result is simple and surprisingly effective:

• Chickens get continuous access to fresh greens 
• Plants are naturally pruned rather than destroyed
• No trays to move or replace 
• No daily labor to “manage” grazing
• No muddy runs created by overuse

It turns grazing from an activity into a background system—one that works quietly, day after day, without intervention.

Most importantly, it allows birds to express natural foraging behavior while staying safely inside the protected structure. It’s one of those solutions that seems obvious in hindsight, but only works when the entire coop layout is designed around it from the beginning.

Predator-Proofing as a System, Not an Afterthought

Predator pressure is one of the most stressful parts of keeping chickens, and too many coop designs treat it as a checklist rather than a strategy.

The Queen of Hoop Coop takes a different approach: predator resistance is built into every layer of the system, not added on later.

Key principles include:

• A continuous, reinforced envelope with no weak seams
• Hardware cloth and fencing sized to prevent reach-in attacks
• Ground-level protection designed to discourage digging predators
• Structural layouts that eliminate blind corners and soft access points
• Optional electric-wire that can be attached directly to the coop using the patent-pending Brackett-Bracket™ —another invention I came up with that sprang from solving a problem—which allows for reach-through grazing without electrocution (important!)

Because the coop is modular and repeatable, predator defenses are consistent across every unit—no improvised patches, no “temporary fixes,” and no guessing where the weak spot might be.

Equally important, the design recognizes that predators don’t just come from the ground. Ventilation, rooflines, and sidewalls are all configured to maintain airflow without creating openings that invite entry. This balance between ventilation and security is one of the most common failures in hoop-style coops, and one that required careful rethinking.

The goal isn’t to build something that feels like a fortress—it’s to create an environment where birds can rest, roost, and graze without constant threat, and where the keeper isn’t always waiting for the next breach.

The Queen of Hoop Coops: A System, Not a Structure

With the Supernova Roof System and Tilt ’N Slide™ insta-clean compo-roost working together, the full vision finally became possible.

The Queen of Hoop Coop Kits are designed to:

• Be affordable and scalable
• Be buildable by real people
• Integrate ventilation correctly
• Support grazing and internal green systems
• Manage waste efficiently
• And grow with your flock instead of against it

This isn’t a single coop design.

It’s a repeatable, modular system built from years of hands-on iteration — including the designs that didn’t work.

From Concept to Reality

After years of building, testing, and refining all these ideas in real-world conditions, the core concepts behind the Queen of Hoop Coops—including the integrated roof system and waste-management solutions—are now patent pending. With the design finally doing what it was always meant to do, the focus has shifted from experimentation to execution.

Manufacturing is currently underway, with the goal of offering complete Queen of Hoop Coop Kits—along with integrated components like Tilt ’N Slide™ and addition of electric fencing using the Brackett Brackett™—directly through this website. These kits are being developed to be practical, durable, and accessible, without sacrificing the systems-based thinking that shaped them from the beginning.

The first production runs are expected to be available for purchase within the next few months, and this space will be updated as components finalize and pre-orders open.

Thanks for reading and please follow our blog for further exciting updates!

~ Kimberley