My girls spend all day and night in the run, as far as I can tell, even though our coop interior is quite nice, IMHO. I guess when it gets cold, they'll want to come into the coop. It's just too hot right now to lock them up inside at night, and we don't worry since the run is very well protected from predators.
We keep the food and water outside.
Here's the interior of our 4' x 4' coop, looking in from a side window toward the pop door:
Showing the nest boxes at the back:
Showing the side door open and the slide-out floor for quick clean-up:
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The roost on hinges is a great idea!! I think easy cleaning will be a plus. I plan on doin that on my new construction and i'd love to see some more ideas as well
The hinged roost working good for now since the peeps are under it. I got all my ideas on this site as I am a totally newbie...here is another design feature that I confused when I read the term Pop door...I kinda though it was referring to a poop door...so I built one. Now I understand the pop door is the front chicklen entrance though this may work well to sweep out bedding/poop. Its the lil door on floor level under the roost that I can open up at lower right hand corner of coop....
Ok here is mine........... now granted it's not a purdy little doll house coop designed for just a few birds but if your planning a decent sized coop or are planning for expansion this may help, I built it myself to suit what I needed out of it.
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It varies depending on the time of year, in the spring hatching season could be 2-300 hundred mostly chicks, I normally keep about 40 breeders all the time, and many more in grow out pen's, and the layer pen will differ at times as well, I have had 50 layers in there at one time. So a good average is around 100-125 consistantly.