Chicken Coop - Inside a larger barn

[Just sayin]

Coop version 3.0 - the new wing addition!

As our chicken-keeping has developed, we decided our coop needed an addition! Actually our Buff Orpington decided this for us, when she went broody and hatched a few chicks over winter. She initially nested in one of the original drawer nests, which are not ideal for chicks because they are both high up and too small.

We ended up having to move her to a dog crate that ended up in my tack room for the coldest part of winter, where they could safely have a little heat.

She hatched three, one survived, due to our learning curve early on, and later an incident with a little hawk when they were outside.

The one that remains is growing up, and it was time to move them back in with the flock. I wanted a way to ease them back without making them fight for space in the original coop, at first. Baby mingles with them by day, but can't really defend herself yet, and it stresses momma out to be crowded with the others just yet. She's still very protective.


This new wing is hopefully better designed for broody hens and for new chicks as we either hatch more or buy more to our flock. Original coop right... new addition left.




For now, we put her crate and nest box in there, but she was more than ready to roost up above again at night, so it's already abandoned. For the long term, I'll take that out, and put the rubber bin and the basket on the floor as nest options if she does this again.



Baby complained loudly about sleeping on a roost, she did not like this development at all!



But momma is ready to roost again... and just comforted her best she could.





If we do end up with more little chicks, we will put up some finer mesh so they don't slip through the fence.

Once these are ready to be integrated, we'll open up the board on top, so that when there's no one currently brooding, the chickens can come and go from all of it.

One last pic of the original coop with the others all tucked in for the night.

 

[hannah8]

my newest coop is very similar built into the corner of our big barn i think its great and i plan to extend my soon

 

[SunkenRoadFarms]

Thanks for this! I'm building something similar this spring since I'll be going from 15 ladies to 34 and a roo and will be stealing some ideas. I love your dog too, I can't wait it get one to protect out girls and other livestock.

 

[henless]

Love your coop!

I have a 30 x 30 barn. DH and I enclosed 2 of the stalls for my coop. I made mine more of an open air coop, since we live in Texas and it gets really hot here over the summer.


I plan on keeping one stall (here on the right) for any future horse we may get.




We had 3 stalls on the left, a middle aisle, and 1 stall, hay room and tack room on the right. Even though we built it in the barn, it looks nothing like yours. I love how everyone makes things so similar, but still very different!



I do have plans working in my head to use a couple of the other "stalls" for breeding pens.

 

[Just sayin]

Yeah - different kind of barn in Texas, huh! Yours makes for a nice open shady spot though, when it's hot.

Our coop was built to be the minimum size, just for roosting in at night. By day, if I don't want to let them out to free range, they can have run of just the hay room (yes, we tarp the hay so it doesn't become pooped on), or they can have the whole barn inside, but I don't have an enclosed run at all.

My chickens are so spoiled now, they get cranky when they're closed in the barn. I've thought about building an outdoor run in that covered leanto outside the barn, but once you let them free range, I've learned, they don't easily adapt to being cooped up. They'll still want out.

 

[catballou]

Hi all! Have lurked a long time, and looked at many of the coop designs here to get ideas. Some of your coops are so beautiful I'm afraid ours will look very plain by comparison... but I thought I'd share it, because in all my looking at coop designs, I haven't seen one that is not it's own structure, but rather is built within an existing barn.

We have a five-stall horse barn with a concrete aisle that houses our horses, goats and pig. It has a large hay storage area at one end, and that's where we decided to build our coop... For ease of construction, and for security, as our barn is buttoned up tight each night and very secure against weather and predators.

This is our first year having chickens... and we started out with a variety of girls for eggs. We couldn't decide which breed we wanted, so we bought one of each that they had at the feed store. One Leghorn, one Buff Orpington, one Rhode Island Red, one Black Australorpe, one Golden Laced Wyandotte, one Barred Rock, and one Americauna (who turned out to be a rooster).

They lived in the house in a brooder for the first few weeks, and then it came time to start building the coop.

We decided to build the coop in what is the hay room area. It's a big area, 24x36, with big sliding doors at the end for bringing in hay. Also can be closed off from the rest of the barn if we want.

Without posting too many pics of the details, because they're simple, we decided on a size and built the whole thing out of existing wood and materials we had around. Used posts, boards, pallets, and part of an old baby crib.



Drawers from a cabinet we took out of the house became our nest boxes...



When it was all done... (at least the first layout revision was done )



Peepers checking out the new digs...



Finishing it up... we enclosed it with horse mesh, which we realize is too big for little chicks or for security if they were outside, it works well for us inside, where the main goal is to keep thieving goats and our pig out of it.

We think it has a bit of a Tiki Bar feel about it. It needs palm trees, I think.



As the chickens grew up and we learned more about what they like, we ended up remodeling inside, and this is the current layout. The nest boxes at the end have worked out well, now that they've started laying, they are using them. But we removed the low perches, because they didn't use them, they all crowded on top of the nest boxes instead. So we put in some nice high perches where they really wanted to be, and a platform for feed and water that makes for an easy way to get up and down.

Latest layout inside...



Nest boxes are still at the other end, and working well! They just started laying this week. Our Leghorn Sally showing us how it's done!



Anyway... that's our coop, and our intro to chicken-keeping! A different kind of coop than I've seen, but it's working for us!



By day we open up the barn and the chickens can free-range in the barnyard with our goats and our pig... Under the watchful eye of our dog Foster. On days when the weather is bad, or we're not there to watch them, they're just as happy to stay inside and roam the barn, particularly if I haven't cleaned the horse stalls yet!

That is exactly what I want to do but on a smaller scale! I'm so glad you posted this!

 

[Aunt Tat]

I LOVE the drawers mounted between the studs!!! Great use of space. As for the "Tiki Bar"? My parrots agree 100%