Building a chicken coup. Glad of any ideas.

[Run Amock DucksNChickens]

My husband is doing a great job on our chicken coup. I've been looking at the coups on here and it seems to be turning out like a tractor coup. He's going to put wheels on it. There's going to be a heat lamp in one of the top sections for young ducks or chickens.
2 nesting boxes (old bee hive boxes) on each end.

 

[nuthatched]

Nice tractor coop, how many hens is going to be in it?

 

[Tonyroo]

Are those aluminum panels? Just remember, using metal on a coop will conduct heat from the sunshine.

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC.

Where, in general, are you located? Climate matters, especially in chicken housing.

Using those boxes for nests is clever.

How big is the tractor? How many hens do you plan on having? Where will the ventilation be?

The Usual Guidelines

For each adult, standard-sized hen you need:

• 4 square feet in the coop,
• 10 square feet in the run,
• 1 linear foot of roost,
• 1/4 of a nest box,
• And 1 square foot of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation, preferably located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on the roost.

 

[suburbanfarmermi]

I was wondering about what your climate is and what is to prevent the metal from becoming a oven. Also you mentioned heat lamp? Have you considered using a brooder style heater? I am a volunteer fire fire and have seen many coop fires started by heat lamps. Very clever design ... good luck on your build. https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/producers-pride-brooder-and-coop-heater

 

[Run Amock DucksNChickens]

Welcome to BYC.

Where, in general, are you located? Climate matters, especially in chicken housing.

Using those boxes for nests is clever.

How big is the tractor? How many hens do you plan on having? Where will the ventilation be?

The Usual Guidelines

For each adult, standard-sized hen you need:

• 4 square feet in the coop,
• 10 square feet in the run,
• 1 linear foot of roost,
• 1/4 of a nest box,
• And 1 square foot of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation, preferably located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on the roost.

That is great information. We plan on the tractor coup for just young ones to go into after a couple of weeks inside after hatching. We need the top to keep warm, hence the iron. Ventilation isn't in yet.

 

[Run Amock DucksNChickens]

I was wondering about what your climate is and what is to prevent the metal from becoming a oven. Also you mentioned heat lamp? Have you considered using a brooder style heater? I am a volunteer fire fire and have seen many coop fires started by heat lamps. Very clever design ... good luck on your build. https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/producers-pride-brooder-and-coop-heater

 

[Run Amock DucksNChickens]

It can get to 45c for a few weeks in summer, but there an old air conditioner in the shed I can use for them. It'll mean being in a shed but it's big and safe.

 

[3KillerBs]

That is great information. We plan on the tractor coup for just young ones to go into after a couple of weeks inside after hatching. We need the top to keep warm, hence the iron. Ventilation isn't in yet.

Too much heat is more of a problem than too cold.

In my Outdoor Brooder, which is 4'x8' (sorry, If I were on my desktop I could do the metric conversion but I'm not), I put 16 square feet of permanent ventilation and 10 more square feet of supplemental ventilation and still had to put a picnic fly over it to keep the temperature under 100F on a 93F day.

 

[Run Amock DucksNChickens]

Ok... we are going to turn the back shed into a chicken house complete with water cooler. The chickens will learn that it's safe in the shed.
As for the tractor coup, we are going to use it for chicks. The top to keep warm and the bottom to keep them safe till they're old enough to go into the shed. It'll come in handy for ducklings too.
The beehives will still be nesting boxes in the shed.