This is a great coop for summer, but I'm not too thrilled with it for the winter in Chicago. Chicken poop becomes rock solid in the freezing temps & it is really difficult to remove it from the wire floors when that happens.So I ended up putting removable poop boards on top of the floors & daily cleanup is now much easier. I still have to work at getting poop off of the ramp, though, and ended up breaking the ramp by scraping too hard...now I have a bungee cord holding the ramp together & can't pull it up at night or it will fall apart. My coop is attached to a large run, though, so I can keep the ramp door open & my girls are still safe.
I also don't like how drafty this coop is ~ solid wood sides or overlapping wood would have been better so there wouldn't be the inevitable gaps between cedar boards which allow winds to blow right through. Plus, my coop door/window is facing East (so there are fewer winter winds), but there are still significant wind gusts that enter the coop & cause the feathers on the hens' bottoms to fly high ~ NOT good. So I ended up ordering the storm doors/covers & keep the side door and 3 out of four bottom sides covered, plus the area on top where snow & rain gets in easily. I've ended up covering one of the coop side walls (the ones with the upper windows on them) with R1 insulation, but I placed it about 6 inches away from the windows so there is still room for ventilation & it just prevents drafts. And the other side with the upper windows has a corrugated fiberglass wall about two feet away from the windows to keep the winds out.
Four out of my five girls (all except the easter egger) have already had mild frostbite this winter (temps got down to -2F at one point, with windchills of -25). I don't know if it was just the severe temps themselves or the fact that I made all these modifications to prevent drafts that caused the frostbite.
The feeder also gave me problems in the summer because the chicken feed would get stuck & I'd have to force it down with a stick (in the feeder) at least twice a day. The chickens also made a mess while eating & the food got all over the floor, so not the best feeder design. And every time it rained the feed would get wet.
Also, I wish I could access the girls from the coop door at night, but since there are two roosting bars I can't access the hens on the bar which is closer to the nesting boxes. This means I rarely handle the hens anymore because they get stressed if I chase them around the chicken run (and I get stressed too!). Makes it difficult to do body checks to see if they are staying healthy.
Also, it really would be nice to access the floor of the coop without having to get down on my hands & knees when there are problems such as the ramp breaking apart.
Although this coop is absolutely adorable, I feel like there are a lot of things I want to change, so I don't know if I would highly recommend it to others. Just my opinion.
