Chicken Coop In Barn?

[OHChick]

Hi all, my husband and I have a large barn that is open on one side (it used to be a feed lot for cattle and then sheep). We're trying to figure out the best place to put a chicken coop and were looking for ideas.

We have two silos with a silo building attached and were thinking of there perhaps? The open side of the barn opens up to a concrete pad, and my preference would be (obviously) to let the chickens walk right out onto grass instead of having to go under a fence.

Does anyone have any bright ideas?

A barn photo to give you an idea

Thanks in advance.

 

[keljonma]

We converted a 15x20 portion of our old horse barn into a hen house. I know someone who converted one horse stall into a hen house. So I know there's a way to convert but it's hard to tell from the picture you posted. If you could get closer shots of the area you are thinking of using, it might be easier to tell.

 

[akyramoto]

my coop & run is a converted horse stall ( 12' x 12') thats in a three stall run in shed. it works great! the run is about 26' long & 16' wide & covered.

 

[schmoo]

I'll post a pic of what were doing to our barn tomorrow -too dark to take pics now. I think ours was also for cattle and pigs .......long ago

 

[chicksnducks]

can you keep chickens in a barn and not let them out into the yard? It seems wrong to me ...but I wasn't sure if it would be ok with the chickies.....

 

[schmoo]

chicksnducks - I wouldn't keep them in the barn without an outdoor run of some sort. Ours will have a coop in the barn leading to their outdoor run.

I will post pics later today.

 

[OHChick]

Quote:
Cool, my husband is curious for ideas, we're trying to see what others have done. We do have 2 horse stalls but will be converting those for our alpacas. (The horses go to their new house today....

but it'll be better for them, we can't ride them and they're getting fat and lazy). We also have a couple of other pens in the barn that I think were used for sheep.... the bad part is the back side (closed in part) is along the road so we can't put a door over there, but could have one on the front side so the chickies could get outside.

On another note, MAN they grow fast! We picked them up on Monday and I swear they're 3x the size they were. Eating like crazy as well. Though with the water, they mainly just splash that around and get wood shavings into it. LOL.

Thanks for the help.