Matt Duboise has taken the idea of raising chickens to a whole new level. Those boring ol’ coops made of wood and wire just don’t cut it in today’s backyards. Think custom-made, people-friendly structures that are predator-proof and beautiful. Don’t forget beautiful.

Matt Duboise is fulfilling a dream with his Carolina Coops, just about ready to start cranking out coop kits and hire employees in its new location in Creedmoor.

“It’s one of the things that’s made us extremely popular,” Duboise said on Thursday’s The Local Skinny! segment. The coops are “extremely well built, but also beautiful.”

Back in 2008, when Duboise and family moved to Durham from New York, he scrounged free wood from his workplace to build his own backyard coop. And then he said he went a step further: “I thought, Why not trim it out? Why not make the chicken coops beautiful?”

Fast-forward a few years. The 2008 Great Recession forced Duboise to return to New York, where he continued to grow his business. But he said he knew he always wanted to come back to North Carolina.

Today, Duboise sends coop kits across the nation, and many Carolina Coops are shipped to the West Coast. He considered re-locating to Las Vegas for that reason, but thanks to Granville County’s economic development director, Harry Mills, Duboise’s return to North Carolina landed him in Granville County. “That man, I fell in love with him,” Duboise said of Mills. “He understands it from an entrepreneur’s point-of-view – (what it means) to invest time and money here.”

Duboise hosts a live webcast on Fridays at noon called Video Chicken. “We have a huge fan base online,” he said. Topics include all-things-chicken, from basic chicken questions to advice about coop construction.

Whether they are production coops or custom coops, Duboise says he’s adamant that the coops must be beautiful. Don’t forget beautiful.

Learn more at www.carolinacoops.com