Cement floor.... do I need to treat it?

[tellynpeep]

I've been at this chicken thing less than a year, and already need a second coop(!)
I've decided to partition off part of the big garage/barn for this second flock, rather than spend another entire summer building a second grand coup. The current structure has a sound cement floor (It was originally built to be an auto body shop.) Aside from the obvious difficulty of drilling into it to attach lumber (plenty of broken drill bits already!), are there any other problems with having a cement floor? Should I seal it with something? Or should I just put a sheet of linoleum over it?

Thanks!
Mary
in still-frozen NH

 

[4-H chicken mom]

I wouldn't waste the money with linoleum. A good layer of shavings and you should be good to go.

 

[CARS]

I have an old barn that was used to hold the "runt" pigs for their confinement operation. We pressure washed it out, cleaned it the best we could. I have never bleached it, disinfected it, etc.

I've had chickens and rabbits in their for 4 years. Never lost anything (well, brooder, day old deaths), never wormed anything, never worried too much about it.

I sometimes think that people create issues that mother nature can take care of. Don't get me wrong, if I see something wrong I will treat it. But so far so good.

I'd skip the sealing and linoleum if I was you. Just keep the coop ventilated and clean as possible.

 

[CARS]

BTW: a hammer drill and masonry bit will solve your drilling issues

 

[tellynpeep]

Quote:
Yeah. I tried to get by without the hammer drill. It's old, very hard concrete. I melted the tip of the masonry bit. Not to worry, the wall is up. I'll post pics at some point. Thanks all for the thoughts on the floor; I won't worry about it then!
Mary

 

[Chicken Rustler]

If you still need to attach anything to the floor they have a tool that uses a shell like a .22 and it will drive a nail through a 2by and into the concrete. You can buy them fairly inexpensive or your local tool rental would have em fer rent.

 

[patandchickens]

Yeah, I'd just use the floor as is (bed thickly with shavings or whatever you use); you could put down plywood (just loose, but snugly fit) under it as protection/insulation but I am not sure how important that is and of course the plywood will gradually deteriorate there.

One thing to consider is that you're likely to run into humidity problems during late winter and early spring on especially warm nice days. Reason being, in a large building with an exposed concrete slab, the slab will keep the building warm for the first part of the winter but as it gradually cools off it will 'store' that cold just as it'd stored the summer's warmth. Then you get a nice 60 F day in April. The warm air is usually also pretty HUMID (in terms of absolute humidity) and when it enters the cold slab-floored building, the coolth strips the moisture out as humidity and condensation. If the building is big enough and the day warm/humid enough, you can end up with *dripping* walls and a wet floor.

You can live with this -- have massive amounts of ventilation that can be opened up at the first sign of warmer weather in Feb/March so the slab is encouraged to start warming somewhat on *dry* slightly-warm days, and/or shut the building up fairly tight on the really problem days -- I'm just saying, figure it into your plans.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat, with chickens in a 15x40 slab-floored building that does this somewhat, and unfortunately forced to store horse hay in a 35x50ish building that does it *big time*.

 

[CARS]

I agree with Pat about the wet floors. Every spring, if I don't open all the doors in my barn the floor is WET! The chickens don't notice it because of the pine shaving but the isles are almost slippery from the fine dust turning into fine mud.

I run a couple cheap oscillating fans to try and keep things dry and help ventilate. When the temps are nice (anything over 40 degrees

) the chickens like the fans.

 

[tellynpeep]

There's *plenty* of ventillation in there. In fact, I need to close some of the gaps between the boards (rough hemlock siding) to keep out the wind and small predators.
Also the soffits are wide open.
Thanks everyone!

 

[vermontgal]

Keep in mind that chicken dander will get on stuff in this building.

A cement floor sounds good, from the perspective of keeping their toenails trimmed and giving them something to keep their beaks ground down.