Any Tips For First Timers???

[bbarrie]

New to byc today and I can't quite figure out how to start my own thread yet but I can reply so I will post my questions here. I was brand new to chicken keeping this summer and we free ranged our birds. I live in Canada so we built a insulated coop for our girls. We have a heated waterer and a red heat lamp. We use straw bedding, and have 5 nesting boxes, one for each chicken and one for our guinea hen. And a roost over top. We also keep a rooster who is very calm. One issue I have discovered is due to our cold weather the poop is freezing before we can get it clean and my girls are now pooping in there nest boxes so I have big frozen clumps of poop everywhere. I want to keep my crew happy and healthy. Any suggestions for my coop design? Will they be okay until spring thaw?

 

[aart]

New to byc today and I can't quite figure out how to start my own thread yet but I can reply so I will post my questions here. I was brand new to chicken keeping this summer and we free ranged our birds. I live in Canada so we built a insulated coop for our girls. We have a heated waterer and a red heat lamp. We use straw bedding, and have 5 nesting boxes, one for each chicken and one for our guinea hen. And a roost over top. We also keep a rooster who is very calm. One issue I have discovered is due to our cold weather the poop is freezing before we can get it clean and my girls are now pooping in there nest boxes so I have big frozen clumps of poop everywhere. I want to keep my crew happy and healthy. Any suggestions for my coop design? Will they be okay until spring thaw?

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[aart]

Best tip I can offer is build first, order chicks last. ......

Hear, hear!!

 

[User395221]

I mentioned access in my earlier post. I'd like to go further and say, don't do any "chook only" sized doors. Do a 'chook-sized' in a human-sized door, but make everything easily human accessible - ie without having to lean in, climb in, or walk right the way around to another spot to access something that you could access if only there was a door there......