3 sided coop help!

[ashleyb0510]

My husband and I have decided to get chickens for meat and eggs. Because I want to know what I'm feeding my family. But anyways. We have a steel frame building with a tin roof. And Boards to use as walls. Its a 20x20. We have the back wall and left wall up. I thought about instead of making the entire thing a coop. Take our boards and go from the back right cornor to the front left and have a triangular coop? If it makes any sense. and fence the other triangle side in for a small run for when they cant be out free ranging. Any ideas. All the advice i could get would be wonderful!

 

[Judy]

Usually the run is much larger than the coop, and when awake they will usually be in the run -- actually, almost always if it is roofed. You could make one or two walls hardware cloth instead of solid, or part of one or both walls. I'll give you a link to 3 sided coops for warm climates. Since chickens are much more cold than heat tolerant, this can actually be used fairly far north. That's a large coop for most families -- nothing wrong with that, but in some climates, a sheltered run is desirable, too.

If you get Cornish cross chicks for meat, they grow off in a few weeks, and poop and stink a lot, so most people house them separately. You could also raise a dual purpose breed or Freedom Ranger type breed, which would probably be satisfactory housed with your layers. If you're not familiar with raising chickens to eat, you might want to read up a bit in the meat birds section before you make a decision.

If you put your general location in your postbit, it would help a lot in answering many questions, as climate is so often a factor. Just go to your profile and fill in the location box.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/163417/please-show-me-your-hot-weather-coops/0_20

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/445004/woods-style-house-in-the-winter/0_20 (just to show how open air a coop can be, even up north.)

 

[4 the Birds]

Sounds like that would work to me; Yet, I would prefer rectangles for each (run larger than the coop). The two acute angles would not be an efficient use of space in my opinion. You have more options and useable area with a squared-off coop and run.

I agree with Judy that your coop sounds large. How may chickens did you have in mind?

 

[cafarmgirl]

Sounds like that would work to me; Yet, I would prefer a 10x20 rectangle for each. The two acute angles would not be an efficient use of space in my opinion. You have more options and useable area with a squared-off coop and run.

I would defintely go with this arrangement rather then making the coop/run triangular. Much better use of the space. I pretty much have a similar set up. My two coops are built against the back wall of my goat barn which only has south and east walls. The coops have pop doors and a run out on the back of the barn in the pasture, but the chickens can also come out inside the barn to scratch around when the weather is stormy.

 

[ashleyb0510]

Would the SLW do good in an open air coop like that ? That is very interesting.

 

[cafarmgirl]

Whether an open air coop will work for you depends a lot on your winter weather. Where I live it doesn't snow and, while it often drops below freezing at night in the winter, daytime temps are always well above freezing. And I still have walls on the end of the coop where the roosts are so birds are never exposed to wind at night.