Too MUCH ventilation!

My husband and I built a coop for our Roo and 2 girls. Most of my questions have been answered here, except for 1. We live in MT, it can get pretty cold. Sometimes in the negative teens, tho not often and not for long. My question is, how much ventilation is too much? I know they need it to keep the frostbite away but I can't find anywhere where it tells you how much is too much. Here are pics of what we ended up with. I was so oncerned about ventilation that I did way too much for winter. We have since, closed some of it off and added eaves to the open areas and I also lowered the front roost bar so that our roo, who grew to be massive, was below the window opening. Is there anything that tells you that the air flow should be so much distance above the top of the head?

We have 18 more chicks (6 weeks today), that we are going to add, I'm hoping before the winter really sets in, and we are going to build a "hotel" to go along with the theme, as well as adding more roosting spots for the little ones but I'm not sure if we need to cover up more of the top venting. The windows are all covered with plexiglass and weather stripping.

I don't have a pic of him on the roost, I will try to get one in the morning but I am usually letting them out and closing them in when it's dark out.

This shows the large upper area I am concerned about.


Other side


This is just cute with my kids checking out the birds checking it out

The roost in the front, at the 2 windows, has been lowered to about 1/2 way between the upper and lower window

Front view

The finished version. I will add another pic showing where we added the eave and a small "flop-down" thingy (very technical) to block out wind and snow.

This is what we added

Very nice coop! I would use a double layer of clear plastic on the windows, rather than that insulation. More light in the coop, and still a wind block. Keep the upper area just like you have it, looks great. In a very bad storm, you could close the windward side hinged shutter if absolutely needed to keep snow out. Mary

Thanks! The whole coop has that insulation in between the plywood and outside. I thought the plexiglassand insulation would be better as that is the side the most wind comes from. The rest of the windows have only plexiglass.


Thanks! I was afraid it was still too much ventilation.

Not sure there can be "too much" ventilation, but you can have it in the wrong location. The test is drafts. Is air moving over the roost bars such that the birds would experience some type of wind chill? You want wide open ventilation, but no drafts, meaning nearly dead still air where the birds roost. Not an easy thing to do.

One way to test this is to hang long strips of flagging tape from the ceiling above and through the roost areas. If they are moving around in a breeze/wind, you have a drafty setup, which is not good. I even bought a bubble making machine to create a stream of bubbles floating in the air so as to watch the wind flow around in mine, but never got a chance to test it. I think it was confiscated and used at a grandson's birthday party. It would work well as a test, however. In days of old, they used the type of smokers used by bee keepers to watch air flowing in and through the coops.

thank you. I will try that