Our Tinycoop

We have built a small chicken coop for our 4 chicks. The coop is 29" by 46" and the coop and attached run are 6 ft. tall, so we can walk into the run. The run goes under the coop as well, to add a little more space. The coop has about 9 square feet and the run has 15 square feet. I know this is on the small side, but we have three easter eggers and one silkie easter egger cross, so we are expecting them to be not much bigger than bantams (<5 lbs.), and therefore felt we could get away with 2 sq.ft. minimum. Also, this breed is supposed to tolerate confinement well and they will have the backyard as well during the day. (It's a small backyard, but gives them more room to wander around.) The whole coop/run is all built out of solid pine, which we burned with a blow torch on the outside to weather treat. It has a corrugated steel roof, slanted to let rain drain off. The openings are covered with hardware cloth. There are large mesh covered maintenance doors on the side of the coop, which is really helping with ventilation, and we plan to install a small solar powered fan to draw warm air out and create a cross breeze to help us through the upcoming hot summer months. We also plan to install bird netting over the entire backyard to keep out hawks, and other predators that might come over the fences/wall.

I believe it's pretty unusual that we decided to use our coop as our brooder with the radiant heater placed inside. The chicks moved in at four days old. We had removable wood inserts covering most of the mesh doors in the beginning to help keep it warm.