Cold Weather Coop

[aknate]

Okay, I am currently building my chicken coop. It is very cold here in Alaska so I want to make sure I insulate well and make this coop air tight. Happy chickens = eggs. Now the problem I have is how to get rid of moisture and ammonia without losing all the heat? I do have a window that opens (with a screen) but I am not sure if that is the best way to go. How often do I need to vent my 4 x 8 coop? I will have 4 chickens. If a picture helps you can see what I currently have on my personal blog: http://green-sustainable-living.com/index.php/2010/02/02/chicken-coop-pictures/

I would appreciate any ideas and I would be very thankful for any help. My family and I have never raised chickens so I don't know how much moisture and ammonia to expect from my 4 chickens.

I am here to learn, educate me.

aknate

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

I have two vents (that I can shut) but I leave open year round. It was well below zero here this winter and I left them open. I shut the chicken doors and it's fully insulated with a heat lamp. The coldest it got to in there was about 15 degrees. But I had no issue with frostbite (for the first time) and did not lose any birds. The coop is 8 x 16 and the vents are about 6 to 8" wide and probably 24" long.

 

[SunnyDawn]

1 small vent (3"x6") at the top most part of the wall should be fine for that few chickens. Having just 1 vent prevents a cross wind. You can add more for nicer days and just close off the extra venting when it's cold, windy (wind is especially bad), and at night but let the coop air out well in the morning. Place the roosts under the vent and add an incandescent bulb for when it gets below 0 inside the coop for extra heat. (with all that insulation it may be pretty cold outside before it gets that low inside). Secure the light fixture really well since it's a small coop and you don't want the birds to knock it down and start a fire. A water warmer to keep their water from freezing is also a must in really cold country like yours. Choose birds that are cold hardy of course.
Good Luck!

 

[aknate]

Thank you both for the input! Should I locate my vent across form the window? That way, during the summer, if I needed to I could open the window and get a draft going?

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
Yes. A cross wind in warm weather is great!

 

[vectorguy]

I have a small coop within a larger shed, with 3 happy hens. I put a wide thin board under their roost, and throw on a couple of handfuls of shredded straw. I visit the coop every morning to open the door to the outside, and at that time, I scrape the prior night's bedding into a 5 gal bucket and throw on clean bedding. Great compost!

I never have any odor, and the straw on the floor stays pretty clean for about 3 months in bad weather when the girls stay in a lot. Their feeder is on the wall. I have a heat lamp under their floor, and a homemade lightbulb heater under their water. Never have a problem with the cold here in Michigan, which is a lot like Alaska. No windows, so I have a timed light bulb. I get eggs all winter, except during molt in early winter. I lock up the coop every night without fail, because we have racoons on the prowl.

 

[patandchickens]

What *part* of Alaska are you in -- the really super cold part, or "Baja Alaska" so to speak?

If you are up north and inland, and get down to -40, -50, -60 F, then there is going to be part of the year when you simply will not be able to have much if any ventilation going. In that situation, you are best of doing everything humanly possible to minimize moisture in the coop -- a droppings board cleaned every morning without fail will help a *lot*, as will good maintenance of your litter and making awfully sure your waterer does not spill or leak -- and try to air things out (to dry the coop air) when you have warmer spells.

But if it does not get super awfully cold where you are -- for instance if you don't generally get much past -20 or -30 F -- then you will still be able to have ventilation open most or all of the time. It is still worth taking the abovementioned measures to minimize humidity but you will be able to have air exchange to help you.

Chickens (of well-chosen breeds, well-kept) generally deal pretty well with dry cold, usually down to 0ish F and often even lower; it is *humid* cold that'll getcha.

I would suggest insulating the bejeebers out of the coop -- if you can do more than just the standard 3 1/2" stud wall thickness of insulation, it *is* worthwhile -- and arranging so that you can run heat lamps if it should become necessary.

There are some good threads on this forum where our other Alaska members describe their setups and management and what works for them, so it might be worth finding them (you could just search "alaska" in this forum section, to find most of the threads).

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[CheerfulHeart2]

to both Aknate and Vector Guy!

 

[aknate]

WOW! Thank you all for taking the time to respond. I do appreciate it. I am lucky to be in a "warmer" part of Alaska (Kenai Peninsula). I would agree that I need to insulate as much as possible. The thing I did not mention is that I live off grid. So the longer I can keep the heat in the better. I am off to search the forum for more ideas and to see what my fellow Alaskans are up too. Thank you all for your replies!

 

[Turbo Bow]

Hello - I am the newbie on the forum. He had a playhouse that was here on the property when we bought some 30 years ago...my wife and daughter thought they would pull off all of the insulation and interior boards, which I thought was stupid! Made for a lot of mess for guess who to clean up. Why do I have to clean up other people's messes? They also decided they were the top dogs on this project and Guess Who had to build it, dig all of the holes and dig in a trench for burying Chicken wire. Well It Certainly wasn't the 2 Bosses.

The Playhouse is about 6 foot wide by about 10 foot long. I had no idea what I was doing. My wife, the head cheese thought that instead of buying chicken wire, it was cheaper to by 2"x4" wire fencing. (BAD Idea) some critter had lunch at our expense one night and so the original flock dropped that night by 4. So instead of 12 chickens we then had 8. My Wife the Brains of the Crew thought that Cats and Dogs were ok and let the chickens out in the yard to go where ever. Cars don't stop for chickens on a busy road and so the flock dropped to 7.
Then wife decides to save the remaining Bany Rooster her sister had, kids were using it for a football! So that small Rooster got saved!
He has to stupidest crow! Like a LP record that has a bad crack in it.

I gave them what I thought was a lot of room and they did have a lot of room when they were small. Now full sized birds they take up a lot of room!
I had never built a chicken coop in my life. I am finding out there is a lot of Trial and Error and little gains forward. I gave them a area of 5 foot by 6 foot. Which I now see that is way way too small. Then I find out they roost up high. I had placed 2x4s up higher just to store them. I thought they nested and made them nice nesting boxes, 6 in all of which they use 2 and poop in the rest of them! I found out they do an awful lot of poo'g at night. So, right away built a roof over their nesting boxes.

It got cold (Michigan) and right away, frozen waterer. About two times Thawing and I said that is enough, I bought a Barn Heater and strung out 150 foot of the heaviest extension wire Kmart had. That was an expensive adventure!
The EYE Opener Really came when I got a Consumers bill for $285! Normal is $65.
So, I got a Red 250 watt Heat Lamp. My idea is, 250 watts burning all the time has got to be cheaper than 1500 watts running most of the time!

I find that the Barred Rocks love the Heat Lamp. Where they spend much of their time basking in the artificial sun. Nope, no tan yet....

I see that the food area and the walk around area and the nesting and roosting is all wrong wrong wrong! By the way, No more Frozen Water and even when it dips into the single digits still fine. And still no insulated walls.

I don't think birds feel the cold like us older people do. I swear it gets colder every year and less snow.
(I buy a Jeep and now no more snow, what gives?)


HOW Much Room for Each Bird? Is there some kind of Rule of Thumb?