To Heat or not Heat my Coop

WesleyBeal said:

Looking, and rather surprised that I don't have any good ones around. I do have a couple videos, and have grabbed a screenshot of the front of the coop and the side of the coop from them.

Weather/time permitting, I'll take photos all around the coop, focusing on the features that were intentional for keeping chickens, in general and in this climate.

For now though....





I deemed it likely that this old coop would last at least this winter without falling down, and cleaned out half of it for my chickens. I need to ask folks in my wife's family how long they know this coop as stood there. As people passed, the coop became a place to store junk. Lots of broken glass, nails, and junk, plus a busted up shallow concrete floor.

I cleaned everything out of the half I was using, including what was left of the floor, and put in class-5 rock to a depth of 3 to 4 inches to help level it out and be sure I wasn't leaving anything exposed. I also went around the building filling in cracks with expandable foam where that would work, and nailing on plywood in places where the gaps were too big.

After that I created a wall dividing off the half of the coop I'd prepared with chicken wire and plywood. I put chicken wire over all the windows from the inside, and the access to the "attic." As the ground squirrels - who had made this coop home for decades - didn't have any trouble slipping through the chicken wire, I put 1/4 inch hardware cloth over the interior wall to a height of 4 feet, I think, and spent a couple weeks trapping the things. Seem to have convinced them to move elsewhere for now.

I knew I would be encircling the coop with electric netting, or I would of used half-inch hardware cloth over the windows.

Then I covered the floor with 6 to 8 inches of wood shavings. Since then I've added straw, and wood shavings.

I plan to "rebuild" this coop. There isn't much salvageable, but I'm going to follow the same design and size. I do plan to use a dirt floor, and not poor concrete.

Features that I've noticed, that I'll try to show when I take photos:

The wall with the windows is the south wall. If you look at the side photo, you can see that it is a good bit higher than the north wall. As a result, the solar radiation absorbed through the windows has less space to heat up than it would if the walls were the same height. Also, there is a roof in the coop at wall height, so still less interior space to warm up, and airspace above that acts as insulation.

The building is double-walled.

Those are some big cupola's on the top of the coop. Originally (one still has it in operation) there's a pipe that runs down from the attic to about 18 inches off the floor, that has holes perforating it for the bottom few feet. So the cupola's are - when working properly, drawing air from chicken height up and out of the coop. Right now, ceiling isn't air tight enough for this to really work, and the pipe still in place is of course over on the half of the coop I'm not using.

I'm sure there are other features to this coop. I need to research, as I know I've seen others built this way on old farms. People knew what they were doing, back in the day. I'd like to learn all I can from what they did.

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Howard E said:

Wesley:

You coop seems to resemble an old historic design called a ........wait for it..............Minnesota House!




Images and info taken from here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=B...C#v=onepage&q=fool proof poultry house&f=true

Minnesota house is talked about on page 28. Note that right behind that is a similar looking Massachusetts house (seems every state needed their own chicken house design).

The roof vents may be similar to what they referred to as the "King" ventilation system. Those are described on page 6 of the book. Look around on the inside to see if you have some inside drop down doors on the front near the ceiling.......with openings on the outside below those.

The cupalas on top resemble some fancy roof vents of the time. Another brand was Star vents, and I still see some of those on old hay barns.

Not sure they are needed, as the Massachusetts house didn't use them or have windows and they seemed to work OK.

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