Please show me your hot weather coops

[bamadude]

X2

 

[cwrite]

I have a couple that are semi permanent that I stack spray painted old tires around. Then I fill the inside with moss and soil and plant some herbs and flowers for our girls to peck at....my chicken yard is the only area my husband tolerates my "crazy crafty wacky mama" stuff. My tires are bright colors with all sorts of wackiness scattered about....it's ironically the most used section of the entire yard!

I had some tires I was experimenting with planting up to help with retention of water and they just happened to be in the area that we turned into the run so they stayed. One had paw paw self seed in it from my home made compost & the largest one has just reached the run roof. It gives it a nice tropical feel & the chooks love paw paw leaves. I hadn't thought about spray painting them though. Hmm...

I live in North Florida and my coop is is 4x8 with one side all hardware cloth. It is within the 8x24 run that is covered with insulated metal roof panels and is under a large oak tree for added shade. I havent experienced a summer yet with it but expect them to be as comfortable as possible.

Great looking run! I'm sure your chickens will love it. The coop looks nice & snake proof which is our main predator problem. If you have little furry things (like racoons) that can stick arms through the fence you may want to put smaller gauge wire cloth around the bottom of the run.

 

[Osburnsa]

For those of you with open coops, what do you do when it rains? Does the coop get all nasty inside?

 

[winteree]

For those of you with open coops, what do you do when it rains? Does the coop get all nasty inside?

depends on the amount of rain. The place where my chickens sleep is roofed completely so unless the rain is coming in sideways everything stays dry but I do have a water resistant shutter like covering for the side wall near the place where they roost if such a storm is coming. I just put it down. But for the ground on the uncovered part it stays clean unless we have more then 4 or so days of heavy rain because the floor is lined with a 3 inch layer of sand

 

[Osburnsa]

We don't get much rain, but pretty much all of it falls in July & August, so there's flooding & hail. I'm trying to figure out what kind if door to put on my coop. It's currently just an open doorway.

 

[lindseyawest]

Love seeing all of the different and creative ideas!

 

[fisher_of_man]

x2. I'm about to build a cattle panel hoop coop for ours- inspired by the many from this site.

 

[monkcat]

Here's our recently completed coop. It's open air as we live in the deep south. But is under a drop shed right now. Later when we move it, we will put corrugated fiberglass panels on the roof. Likely the dark ones for shading.

nest box

 

[monkcat]

For those of you with open coops, what do you do when it rains? Does the coop get all nasty inside?

We have had tremendous rain in the past few days. It got squishy in places. Threw more leaves and pine straw down and it's fine.

 

[Mims]

I have a question I haven't seen on here yet. I live in West Texas, in the middle of cotton farm country, near Lubbock. When the wind blows, we get dust storms so bad you can't see 10 feet in front of you when driving. They can last a day or 2.

Will this bother the chickens? I am planning a 3 sided coop, with a large door that stays open most of the time, and I can swing shut when it gets really cold. I plan on covering the eaves with HW cloth for ventilation, and adding some windows in the coop area for summer ventilation. It is usually in the triple digits most of the summer.

This is similar to what I plan on doing. It's not my coop, but whoever built it did a great job and gave me some good ideas.