Rsvhvn
In the Brooder
Hi, we are new to chickens. We just got 6 Isa Brown from Royal King. They are 3 weeks old. We are building a chicken coop inside of a lean-to area. Right now all we have done is the flooring. It is 1 foot off the ground (hardware cloth to go all around the bottom and out 8-10"), 2x12 sides with 2x6 floor joists, 3/4" plywood. We were planning to build the walls up just below the rafters (about 9 ft roof height) leaving about 2 foot open at top on three sides, screwing in 1/2" hardware cloth over these openings, 2 windows on opposite sides, 1 people/clean out door and 1 chicken door. The total coop space is 8 ft x 9 ft. The fourth side will be a 3 ft x 9 ft storage area.
So questions are:
Is that enough ventilation or should the walls vents be more like 3 ft? I want there to be enough ventilation that they can stay in the coop when it's really bad out in the winter, but not have the vents so large that they end up freezing. The approximate length of two sides is 9 ft and one side is 8 ft.
In the garage, we found some old, but in really good shape, crank windows. Would one on each of the 8 ft sides be enough during the summer (late July and through August is the humid time with temps in the 90s). The garage is on one side (about 3-4 ft away) and the other side has the back wall of the lean to. The area between the coop and the back wall is about 16 with no side wall.
We will be including a run that is 8 ft wide by 25 ft long. In addition, there is 1/4 of acre fenced in next to the coop/run area they can free range, plus another 2 1/2 to 3 acres behind that I can take them to in a chicken tractor.
Thanks for reading and any help you can provide.
Robin
So questions are:
Is that enough ventilation or should the walls vents be more like 3 ft? I want there to be enough ventilation that they can stay in the coop when it's really bad out in the winter, but not have the vents so large that they end up freezing. The approximate length of two sides is 9 ft and one side is 8 ft.
In the garage, we found some old, but in really good shape, crank windows. Would one on each of the 8 ft sides be enough during the summer (late July and through August is the humid time with temps in the 90s). The garage is on one side (about 3-4 ft away) and the other side has the back wall of the lean to. The area between the coop and the back wall is about 16 with no side wall.
We will be including a run that is 8 ft wide by 25 ft long. In addition, there is 1/4 of acre fenced in next to the coop/run area they can free range, plus another 2 1/2 to 3 acres behind that I can take them to in a chicken tractor.
Thanks for reading and any help you can provide.
Robin