1st Coop & Run, limited space, could use some expert advice.

[Calomel]

I've been bitten by chicken fever. The desire to have a small backyard flock has been simmering for years under the surface but over the past few weeks has flared into a full-blown obsession. I've convinced my husband to go along with this insane hobby of mine even though he couldn't care less about poultry. After discussing location (ie: me blathering on about it excitedly for half an hour), we agreed on a spot of unused high ground in our sloped backyard (he pointed at it and said "build it there"). In the spring I will be leveling out and raising that area, preparing a foundation for the coop.

The space is 6' wide and snuggled up in between the property fence and a very large (15') hedge of purple lilacs. The length of the coop + run is still up for debate; 8' is what I measured out for the diagram, but I think I could get away with a 12' footprint and still have the whole thing looking respectable. I just don't know where to put the coop itself inside that footprint. Only two sides of the pen will be accessible (at best I will have one wall for external nest boxes/ people door) and I will still need enough space for a run door so I can get in there and clean/rake.



The scale is more for my use, I'm using an invisible grid to draw all my plans out. The lilacs are going to cut off 3-4 feet of accessible space no matter what, and they are what limits the run to it's 6' width. The diagrams above are two options I could come up with for placement of the coop but I would love some advice from experienced coop builders. Would it be worth it to just extend the run to 12' and have the extra 4' of run length to play with?

 

[KDK1]

What kind of fence will corner it? What is the orientation of N E S W? Where in the country are you located? 12' is always better than 8.

 

[Calomel]

The fence is wooden. 6' pine panels. The location was chosen mostly because of it's high ground location in the yard, but also because the northern side 'fence' is really a gate that's been sealed shut and will never open. The diagram is N-E-S-W correct, so North is the top of the drawing. I'm in Omaha, Nebraska. Summers can climb over 100 degrees and winters can drop into the single digits.

 

[KDK1]

The wooden fence would offer some protection from northerly winds in the winter. You could put some venting high in that wall of the coop for summer and close it for winter. I would make the south wall of the coop hardware cloth. A high vent on the west wall and a nice big window that you could close on the east wall.