Gilbert man's coops give chickens a homey feel

Nov. 22—Chickens may not want to fly out of Alex Verkruijsse's upscale crafted coops — especial from one model selling for over $5,000.

The Gilbert man has been designing and building eye-catching houses for backyard chickens fulltime since the beginning of the year.

"We wanted to make sure that their beauty is the focal point in the backyard," Verkruijsse explained. "So, it's something that people can be really proud of and enjoy looking at."

Chick Inn Coop offers six models — The Urban, The Cottage Coop, The Good Morning Coop, The Homesteader Starter Kit, The Homesteader Coop and Then Nantucket Coop.

The least expensive is The Urban, a modern farmhouse design that starts at $1,685. The 6'x4' coop can house up to three chickens.

The deluxe model is The Nantucket Coop with a starting price tag of $5,185. It features a 6'x6' coop with a 6'x12' run, or fully enclosed pen. It also includes two large operable windows, two custom planter boxes and 15 feet of roosting bars.

The most popular model is The Homesteader Coop, starting at $3,985.

"It's a nice 6'x6' coop and a 12-foot run attached to it where chickens play during the day and run around," Verkruijsse said. "It's a walk-in coop that's fairly easy to maintain and very pretty."

Verkruijsse said the homes are built strong and predator-proof. They're also tall enough for people to walk in, doing away with having to crouch down on hands and knees to clean the coop.

Customers are able to customize the models to their own liking and many do, according to Verkruijsse.

"We have standard models on the website but most of the time, customers will tell us what they want and take one of the models and makes tweaks like a bigger room," he said. "One of my orders for December is for a family.

'They have someone in a wheelchair so I'm making the door bigger and wheelchair accessible."

Verkruijsse's delivered his coops all over Arizona to customers as far north as Flagstaff and as far south as Tucson.

His recent customers included a person who lived in a tiny townhouse in Scottsdale and a customer who had a 4-acre mini farm but the bulk of his sales are to "regular suburban HOA homes."

Verkruijsse fell into his new career not by design. His life up to this point was in corporate, working leadership roles in the food-and-beverage industry.

In 2017, his family, which was living in an HOA community in Gilbert, decided to raise chickens for the eggs and as pets, Verkruijsse said, adding that he wanted to show his kids how to raise food.

"They make really great pets and they are great for the backyard," he said. "They help keep the scorpions down — they eat those and other critters.

"Chickens are very quiet. They are definitely quieter than a dog for example and also very easy to clean."

He said that chickens don't emit an odor, only their feces do if the area is not kept clean.

Verkruijsse's first coop came off of Amazon's website.

"The picture looked really nice," Verkruijsse recalled. "When we got it, it was fake wood and when I was drilling into it, it was splitting."

He said the coop was fine at first when the six chickens were chicks but once they got big, it was evident they outgrew their abode.

"It was not pleasant for them," he said. "They looked like they were sitting on top of each other."

He started searching for another coop but couldn't fine one to his satisfaction and decided to build his own.

It wasn't much to look at, Verkruijsse admitted, describing the coop as "just kind of a fenced-in area."

But his wife, Josefina, insisted that it looked pretty, so he painted it and put lots of plants around it.

During the pandemic, a couple of friends bought chickens to raise and Verkruijsse said he gave them pointers on how to build their own coops.

He said they were running into the same issues that he had — none of the coops on the market were large enough, pretty enough and easy to maintain.

"When the pandemic hit, my sons were very active in soccer and kickboxing and all that stopped," he said. "I wanted to make sure they stayed active and I said, 'Let's build a coop and let's see if it sells and you guys can keep the money.

"When we put it on Facebook Marketplace, it sold within a week and we decided to build another one."

It was Father's Day 2020, when Josefina suggested he start a business building customized chicken coops.

"The boys really liked doing it and helping, so that is when we started," Verkruijsse said. "We put out a message on lot of Facebook groups, chicken groups and we started getting orders."

Verkruijsse, who had moved by then to an acre-lot on Ray Road in town, began manufacturing his coops inside a 40-foot by 20-foot workshop he built on a dirt patch in his yard. He's also increased his flock to 30 chickens, which can produce seven to 10 eggs a day during the winter and up to 20 eggs daily during the spring and fall.

He has one employee who helps with the construction — cutting and sanding the wood and painting — and his two sons, Sebastian, 17, and Federico, 15, pitch in when they need pocket money.

"One helps with painting and things like that," he said. "Often times they come on the delivery as well. I need some muscle as the panels are quite heavy."

Verkruijsse has sold 75 coops since opening his business, which is spreading due to word of mouth and social media. Chick Inn Coops produces about one chicken coop project per week.

According to an American Pet Product Association survey in 2021-22, the number of households with backyard chickens grew to 13% in 2020 from 8% in 2018. And more people reportedly joined the homestead trend following the skyrocking costs of eggs in 2022.

Verkruijsse has been able to make a go with his new venture despite having no prior training in architecture or construction although he said he has always been handy with woodworking.

"The biggest thing that we learned is how to build the coops in such a way to make it easy to transport and install," he commented. "The very first coop we delivered, we spent at the customer's house six hours to put it together again.

"And now what we do is build everything in panels and I put the whole structure together to make sure it fits perfectly."

The coop, which comprises some panels as large as 6'x6', is then taken apart and delivered. It now takes one to 2.5 hours to reassemble a coop, secure it and do touch-up painting, Verkruijsse said.

These days, Chick Inn Coops isn't limited to just chicken houses.

It's now offering The Play Loft for children, starting at $1,885. The 6'x6' structure includes custom colors, two bookshelves and a solar-barn lamp. Kid's table-and-chair set and a slide option are extra.

"We started getting couple of customers asking me, 'hey, can you build a playhouse for my kids' and I started getting those requests regularly," Verkruijsse said.

"One customer asked me to build a tree house. I used to decline those requests because I was so busy with the chicken coops but one night I said, 'maybe I'll try to make one' and so we designed one and then we built it, my employee and I, and I advertised it on the Facebook group, Go Gilbert.

"The response was tremendous."

Verkruijsse said he's sold 10 so far and hopes to offer more play models.

Info: chickencoops.com