post your chicken coop pictures here!

[Tranquil Acres]

Just a few new pictures of our coop.

 

[bigmrg74]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Should look nice once you get it finished up. You're planning to paint it all up right??

 

[Sylvester017]

I need advice. Is this coop big enough for 4 adult hens? My girls are still young now.
Is it ok to keep the coop on the north side of the shed year round? Should we move it to a sunny location during the cold months here in CO? They are free range most of the day and every evening. The entire yard is their range and they are still supervised at this age.
Also, we have had so much rain that the areas set aside for dust baths have turned to mud. If this weather continues, do I need to create a dry dust bath for them? Like a kid-sandbox or something?
Hope I posted this in the correct forum.
Any help is appreciated. I'm a first-timer.

Since you free-range your cute girls the coop only needs to be big enough for them to roost - otherwise they only use the coop to lay their eggs, snooze, or hide from aerial predators. There does need to be adequate roosting room as others on BYC will advise you. Be sure the coop has added bracing or fortifying from nasty night critters like Raccoons and Opossums, etc. You never knew you had raccoons, possums, coyotes, foxes, weasels, skunks, bobcats, etc, until you get chickens. The da*m predators crawl out of nowhere! Raccoons are crafty and nasty and can crawl up rain gutters, block walls, stucco walls, and with their collapsing spines crawl thru openings a bird can't fly through - and the nasties don't kill chickens for food but just for the sport of it. Fortunately they are night hunters and if the chickens are well-secured shouldn't be an issue.

We've had our little 4x6 coop for 4 years and our 4 girls happen to sleep inside 3 very large 16x16-inch x 2.5-feet tall nestboxes - but that will soon change as we've invested in a new larger coop with proper perches set higher than the nestboxes. In rainy or windy weather we have to tarp over the coop and have a popup canopy over it to protect from summer sun and winter rain. It has a dirt floor which unfortunately the hens love to use for dust-baths on rainy days. So we setup another popup canopy in the backyard and have a 4x4 raised cedar bed with dry dirt for them to dust-bathe on rainy days. Be prepared for a lot of dust-bath holes in your yard. Chickens are great at tearing up a backyard so we sectioned half our yard for our raised garden beds and the other half the chickens can do whatever they want.

We have 4 large doghouses setup around the yard to snooze/hide in or protect from windy days if they don't want to go into the coop. We also have a couple plywood sheets set on cinderblocks for added hiding places to dive into if our resident Cooper's Hawk drops by. Lawn furniture and/or picnic tables or benches look nice placed around the yard and the hens will use them to hide under from flying predators. Amazingly the hawks prefer open area to swoop on running hens and won't go after the hens if they are under cover of something even if they are in plain sight. Hawks are cowardly on the ground (except toward baby chicks or ducklings). Hens are naturally predator-savvy if provided adequately spaced places to hide so they aren't forced to run long distances to hide. Even our little 2-lb Silkies are alert and sometimes are the ones to sound the alarm and hide quickly. I read that chickens use their right eye to spot food while foraging and use their left eye to watch for danger. Don't know how accurate that is but makes sense why they can be so quick to spot danger. Chickens are so much smarter than the average citizen gives them credit!

As for coop placement we have ours 3 feet from the garage wall and facing east -- the garage deflects the constantly blowing winds coming from the W/SW. You'll have to determine what weather element you need to protect your coop from and place it accordingly - whether you have wind issues (like us) or rain or blowing snow issues. Burying the legs of a popup canopy (to prevent para-sailing) over a coop will help keep the coop dryer in winter and cooler in summer - convenient shelter for when you collect eggs! In SoCal we get extremely hot humid summers so we're asking our contractor to build a patio over our newest coop so we won't have a popup canopy any more. I'm also tired of having to constantly tarp the coop for 4 years. You'll soon get a feeling for what you need/want to do for your girls as you watch and learn their habits, likes, and dislikes.

 

[Sylvester017]

Just a few new pictures of our coop.

Too cute!

 

[GramaCindy]

OH MY GOODNESS! How absolutely adorable!

 

[SueT]

We turned an old donkey shed into a chicken house, using cedar fence pickets to close in the front.
It now has an enclosure around it and in the back is 50' of moveable tunnel with a larger pen at the end.

 

[perchie.girl]

We turned an old donkey shed into a chicken house, using cedar fence pickets to close in the front.
It now has an enclosure around it and in the back is 50' of moveable tunnel with a larger pen at the end.

OH I love the chicken tunnel.... a little bamboo... a few zip ties plastic mesh... eggcellent. And I WANT that Donkey Shed.... Awesome...

deb

 

[Jheier]

Hello everyone! I am new to BYC but I have been taking in all of the awesome forums! My hubby just finished our coop this weekend. Our Welsummer chicks are in and loving it! It was a big job, but it is done!

 

[RobJones]

Nice job

 

[peastix]

Nice job

X2 great job and welcome!