catawba coop ramp

[lauriruth]

can't believe i missed this post - just saw it today!
Genabeana - i just finished my catawba my babies have been in it for almost a week. after 2 nights of trying to catch the little buggers and put them up in the coop, closing the ramp, listening to them calling out, waking, checking, dosing, waking, checking....i decided to leave the ramp down for one night and see how it went. all was quiet (i did have to put them up one at a time) after that night, i've been leaving the ramp down and at dusk they march up the ramp like little soldiers and settle down for the night. last night we had a cool (59)

front blow in with storms, so after they went up i closed the ramp. they squawked all night.
mine are only 4 1/2 wks. old, so i'll continue to baby them for a while with the weather. i'm in so. tx. so "cold" isn't in my vocabulary...

 

[kristenm1975]

n2cork, could you show a picture of the latches you put on the removable side doors of your catawba? I'm interested in that, as I'm building one of these for my chickens soon.

Thanks!

 

[BioBob]

I have a Catawba, and a re-designed larger Catawba "style" Ark.

I close the girls up every night (8 in the large version and 6 in the original Catawba) and they seem to like the sound of the ramp closing. Other than Hawks, I have seen no predators, but I'm not leaving any invitations lying around!

Harrisville Chicken: I agree! The original Catawba is much too small for a Standard Chicken! I have 6 Comets in mine, and I will be enlarging the top section to make roosting more comfortable for them.
The roost is too low, too narrow, and the nest boxes are much too small. I would advise anyone thinking about a Catawba to look for something else if you have Standard Chickens (unless you modify the upper structure).

 

[chick4chix]

We built a catawba style coop (used the photo but made it taller and larger on the bottom - it's 4' x8' across. I have 6 standard hens in it, and I think it could fit two more. I close the hatch at night and re-open it in the morning and leave it down all day. The girls all put themselves up to roost at dusk and I go out a little later to roll up the hatch and lock it because even though we live in the city- we do have raccoons and I have seen them in the neighborhood along with opposums - so I'm not taking any chances. Good luck with your ark and chickens

 

[benthere-donethat]

Hi everybody. I realize these are older posts and I've posed this question in another thread, but thought I would ask here too. My new chicks have been doing well in the Catawba coops that I built, but last night I forgot to close the ramp door and something (a fox?) dug under the pen and ate six of them. This group had just been moved out into the ark a few days ago and hadn't learned to walk up the ramp to roost each night, so I'm sure they were sleeping right next to the walls on the ground. I've also been concerned about ventilation if they were shut up at night. I wonder what you think about these ideas:

I hate to cover the bottom with hardware cloth because I want them to be able to scratch and eat plenty of weeds and grass, so I have two options:

1. put 2' of hardware cloth around the exterior perimeter to prevent predators from digging under. the cons here are that it will be more difficult to move and it won't be as nice aesthetically.

2. i could attach hardware cloth on the second floor - inside the removable sides - around the ark frame. this way, i could close the ramp each night, but in hot weather, they'd still have an 'open' side. this would still allow me to place the sides on in mild weather or i could even put them halfway on and off if it were raining, etc...

any thoughts or experience about this?

thanks in advance...

 

[genabeana]

I think you are best off with the cloth around the bottom of the coop. opening the side is nice for you to clean out the coop, but it's not necessary for them to have an open side. When I first started with chickens in the coop, a couple of times it rained while I had one side open. All the dry bedding got soaked. If the chickens hang out in there, they will roost over the ramp entry way, or be laying eggs in the nesting boxes. They don't care if they have an open side or not. I just found it's best to keep it closed due to the weather. That's my 2 cents!

 

[AaronK]

wow that's too bad - i'm sorry for the loss your hens.

when something got through the chicken wire i was using on my chicken tractor, I reinforced it by covering the existing chicken wire up with 2" wire fencing. I think if you do *that* on the bottom, they'll have plenty of access to the soil beneath. It seems a little better than hardware cloth (although slightly harder to install).

 

[patman75]

I use welded wire around the bottom, chicken wire on the floor. It keeps the chickens from tearing out the lawn and keeps predators from digging under. Because the wieght of the tractor against the wire/ground keeps them from getting in.

going on 3 years with it, ramp down all the time, no losses, caught many raccoons with live traps around the coop.

You could do an apron design and have harwire cloth go out from the edges 2-3 feet.

 

[Chicken Boy-17]

no ramp here

 

[genabeana]

Hey, I lived in Woodstock GA for 8 years! In fact, I still feel like it's my home. I've been away for 8 years. I miss it!