A chicken rookie's coop project...

[Tap Dancing Chickie]

I would LOVE to set your son up with my chicken lovin daughter !!!

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Did you notice that cute smile and dimple? OOOOOO LA LA! I wish I was about 30 years younger, a whole lot cuter and lived a lot closer.... I would be their to volunteer my help

Oh and the coop is really nice to look at too. I can't wait to see more pictures of your son ..opps.. I mean coop.

 

[Judy]

I'm not far from Valdosta, nearly in Florida.

I imagine the 4 sides with lots of hardware cloth will work well for you; that's actually what I have, though 3 sides would have been enough. A good secure 3 sided coop/run combo is just that much more hardware cloth. In summer you will be so glad they won't get a lot of sun, really. A foot of clearance above their heads is probably the minimum. Roost height really isn't critical as long as it's higher than the bottoms of the nests. Chickens like to fly onto and off a roost that's, say, 30" off the floor, and they need lateral room to do this without danger of injury. Mine will fly a good 6' laterally to get down off their 30" roost. If the coop does not provide this kind of space, then yes, they need a ladder or shelves to hop onto, something to prevent flying injuries. The roost also needs to be about a foot from the wall because they hang over -- and drop poop down the wall. I don't have a run, only a large fenced yard, so won't try to help there. In case you haven't run across this, you're also going to want hardware cloth lying on the ground and well secured to the coop or run, about 18" wide, to prevent digging under. They say landscaping staples work well to hold it down til grass grows into it.

Think of ventilation as a nice big hole at the very top of the coop. Its purpose is to let warm humid air out. Obviously this isn't so great when it rains. That's why I like slanted roofs in one direction with the vent at the high end; fairly easy to vent as well as close it off in sideways rain if needed. If the roost is on the other side of the coop, draft isn't a problem. Draft is more what you would think, moving air on the roost. In summer, that draft becomes a welcome breeze. Thus the shutters. I'd make one wall 8' and the opposite one lower, maybe 6'.

Some people use those wind-operated roof turbines for ventilation. I suspect in most cases they are not sufficient but then have never used one.

 

[M&LO]

Thank you ddawn & everyone else for your answers and patience with my questions. ddawn, I was hoping you were a little closer than Valdosta so I could see
your setup but I only go thru Valdosta twice a year on my way to Florida to visit my Mom and we were just there. Oh well...
I've already started digging around the run to bury the hardware cloth....I'm digging about 4 inches down and 15-16 inches out and then I'll staple it and put
the dirt that I removed back on top and toss out some grass seed. I sincerely appreciate all of the help so far and will post pictures on our progress.

 

[EweSheep]

Way to go! Yep good looking MARRIED son LOL! It is good to have helpers!

 

[wolfandfinch]

M&LO :

Thank you ddawn & everyone else for your answers and patience with my questions. ddawn, I was hoping you were a little closer than Valdosta so I could see
your setup but I only go thru Valdosta twice a year on my way to Florida to visit my Mom and we were just there. Oh well...
I've already started digging around the run to bury the hardware cloth....I'm digging about 4 inches down and 15-16 inches out and then I'll staple it and put
the dirt that I removed back on top and toss out some grass seed. I sincerely appreciate all of the help so far and will post pictures on our progress.

I was just going to say you need to bury that cloth to prevent burrowers. I was told to go down at least 6" if not 12" but maybe going out will do the job. I'd go further than 4" just in case though...​

 

[Judy]

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I was just going to say you need to bury that cloth to prevent burrowers. I was told to go down at least 6" if not 12" but maybe going out will do the job. I'd go further than 4" just in case though...

Actually you don't have to go down at all, only out, if the wire is secured to the ground well enough. I like the 4" though because it masks it from the digger, makes him work a minute to discover it's doing no good, should frustrate them pretty fast.

ML&O, PM me anytime if I can help. I doubt that seeing my arrangement would do you much good, as your construction is quite different from mine. Mine is all metal, built from what was already here, and the slant is all to one side. Everything between the wall tops and the roof is open air, maybe 6" tall on one long side and 10" tall on the other, with overhanging roof. The people door is a frame covered in hardware cloth, on the north wall, which is where most of our wind comes from; we're in some sort of geographic wind tunnel here. The south wall is half hardware cloth, floor to roof. The long walls are east/west. Roosts are in the SE corner. Right now the people door is covered in plastic and there is an old area rug hanging over a lot of the south wall hardware cloth. There's still a lot of air movement in there, and the chickens cuddle up in the SE corner of the roosts. It's not an ideal setup. There is no typical run, there is a yard that's maybe 70' X 90' with a 6' fence which at one point was reinforced with electric. A lot of the time they free range anyway. We lost a lot of birds to predators before we got the dogs trained to leave the chickens alone. Since then, we've lost one bird, and that may have been illness. Well, until something got 4 of my 5 chicks hatched in November. I suspect one of our resident hawks finally got hungry for chicken, though I've never even seen them show an interest in the chickens.

Just be sure the warm humid air has a good sized hole as close to the high part of the roof as possible, and you should be OK with your partly hardware cloth walls.

 

[M&LO]

OK...the saga continues. I decided to dig down the 4 inches (and out 15 inches) around the coop because besides the obvious pleasure I'd get from frustrating a digging predator, we also have 6 grandchildren under the age of 4 and the edges of the hardware cloth is pretty sharp...it'll possibly avoid a cut this way. Anyway...here's a photo of my "trenches".

It doesn't look like we got a whole lot done but all the walls are up in the coop now...

Inside of the coop showing the door to the run and the nest boxes. A lot more to do....

 

[kyeschicks]

its turning out really well!

 

[tiffanyh]

Very cool. I may have missed it, but will the "run" portion have flooring?

 

[M&LO]

Originally....no. The hardware wire was just going to enclose the chickens. After working on this project for another 3 hours this morning....I'm having serious
2nd thoughts about even having a run. It would indeed be too hard to get in there and clean with my current design so now I'm thinking of taking a chainsaw
and cutting the run off altogther and just fencing in a large part of the yard.