NC businessman donates Queen Anne-style chicken coop to vice president’s mansion
Vice President JD Vance received a new chicken coop last week.
And it’s not just any chicken coop.
It’s the mansion of chicken coops.
The McMansion, if you will.
And it came from a business right here in North Carolina.
Carolina Coops in Creedmoor is owned by Matt and Gnon DuBoise, who create fancy chicken coops, goat houses and bunny bungalows.
Even quail coops.
(Former Vice President Dan Quayle, you missed an opportunity, am I right?).
Picture this, a Queen Anne-Victorian Revival build with a round turret. It’s white with green accents.
Who knew chicken coops could be so gosh darn pretty?
“Why not make a chicken coop beautiful?” Matt DuBoise said. “Why not make it a destination? Why not make it functional art?”
DuBoise is a New Yorker, but he moved to Durham during the Great Recession and said he fell on hard times. He was an exterminator at the time and worked around a lot of construction sites.
And he had no qualms about pulling scraps from their dumpsters.
“I‘ve always been a builder,” DuBoise said. “I’ve always built animal enclosures, and I found so much good material inside these dumpsters that I was like, let me just take this home and build some things.”
He wanted a chicken coop in his backyard.
But DuBoise said he was working with garbage, and it wasn’t pretty.
That’s when it struck him: “Why not trim it out and give it something that is just a beautiful show-piece.”
“Ever since then, every coop that we have designed, I want stunningly beautiful,” DuBoise said.
DuBoise’s website gives you just a hint of the animal enclosures he’s willing to build for his customers, with styles described as Gothic, Craftsman, Californian, American, penthouse, and tractor.
His chicken coops are now all over the world, owned by billionaires and bus drivers, he said. And he donates coops to local schools too.
So how did one of his coops end up at the Naval Observatory, home of the vice president and his family?
DuBoise said a customer learned that Second Lady Usha Vance was looking for a coop because her husband wanted chickens, and she put his office in touch with Carolina Coops.
“I got a call one day from a representative of the vice president’s residence, saying, ‘Hey, we’d love to have a chicken coop here. You think you can help us out?’ DuBoise recalled. “And I said, ‘Absolutely.’”
DuBoise donated the coop to the Naval Observatory.
He took inspiration for the coop from the turret on the Queen Anne-style home of the vice president. He said it is one-of-a-kind, though he suspects other customers will begin requesting it.
DuBoise said the opportunity has been an emotional, “pinch-me” moment.
It is such a great feeling that I get to be part of something where, in this case, starting with JD Vance to lead by example, like, ‘Hey folks yes, I’m the vice president of the United States, but I eat eggs, my kids eat eggs, why not have some baby chicks,’” DuBois said. “I’m so thankful to be a part of that, to help them get the message out there.”
He knows that his chicken coops aren’t for everyone.
Some old-school farmers don’t understand what he’s doing, he said, and he doesn’t blame them, because farmers don’t make a ton of money.
But seeing his work at the Naval Observatory brought him happiness.
“When I stood there and looked at the coop, it represented 20 years of hell that I’ve gone through as an entrepreneur, and what all my employees have done for Carolina Coops to make this successful, and truth be told, our customers are awesome,” DuBoise said. ”If it wasn’t for our customers purchasing from us, supporting us, trusting us, we wouldn’t have the money to pay for a coop that expensive to be able to donate it.”
“To me it’s a success of everyone that believed in me, believed in this idea that, hey, why not make a chicken coop beautiful?”
This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 10:00 AM with the headline "NC businessman donates Queen Anne-style chicken coop to vice president’s mansion."
