Confused Newbie with 2 main questions please.

[buffbrahmaboy]

A 10'x12' coop is a significant size and you have a lot of options to consider. It should be fun! My coop is a bit larger. Consider: How many birds do you eventually want to wind up with? Lots of posts here give good space-per-bird data. We designed for 30 hens total but currently only have seven. What type and size chicken? Large layers like a bit more nesting space. We have large birds, so 14"x14"x14" was our minimum and two of the boxes are actually 14x16x14 to give the larger hens a bit more width. Check out my BYC page.

We opted for a coop with a 'clean' area just inside the door and a 'tunneled' nesting box which allows collection access from the clean area. This was for wintertime convenience, but your winters are possibly milder than ours. Our nest boxes are off the floor to make collection easier. Storage underneath. Also we vacuum accumulated chicken dust from this area periodically, and a raised nest just seemed to make more sense. Don't let them roost on the nests.

Another area worth spending time on is a droppings pit under the perches. I can muck out the entire coop in about 30 minutes and do so every few months. Please keep us updated with photos.

 

[NewChickHere]

Hello my new chicken friends. I am so grateful for all the info you have given me. I of course have a million other questions but will start with one right now and also see if I can figure out how to post a couple of pics here too. We are FAR from done with the coop but the brooder box is ready and chicks should arrive Monday.

As you can imagine we are gitty with excitement in anticipation of it all.

Ok, my main question right now is.....the place where we are putting our coop is behind our house, in our field that ALWAYS has lots of wild turkeys grazing. They poop EVERYWHERE of course and forage all around too. Well, as we get to the point of enclosing the run, should we do anything to treat the ground at all? I mean, I hear people talking about bringing home new chickens from somewhere and sort of quarantining them in case they have any disease or pests etc. Well, could all the turkey stuff be all over my ground? Thank you for any help. Now let me see about some pics. Thanks again everyone. Not totally sure what I'd do without this forum.

Kim
Ok cool, it worked. lol. So, you can see all the turkeys hanging around (we have 25 acres and of course they hang out right here ha).
Well, there poop is everywhere we will be enclosing the run. More pics below.


Since we don't have any trees in this area, we raised the coop 3 foot so that they could use that space too, along with
a bit of free ranging when I'm home. I'm super nervous about predators. We have them all. Our house with trees
is just a little ways to the right here.


My husbands awesome Man Cave is going to be a Chick Cave for a bit. The pool for when they first get home,
and then we'll take that out when they get a little bigger and can handle the corners better. Do you think this will work
for them until I can put them outside? I'm hearing a lot about stinky and dusty. lol.

 

[buffbrahmaboy]

Your plastic pool brooder should work out fine, just don’t forget the red heat lamp and thermometer. I used the same type of setup with my batch of 26 day-olds. A valuable lesson: Line the bottom of your pool with old towels before you put the shavings in. I had a chick displace an Achilles tendon because of the slippery plastic bottom and nothing would keep that tendon back in place. Since we couldn’t keep a lame ‘house chicken’ and it was growing at only half the rate as the rest of the brood, it had to go. Sad day.

 

[AlienChick]

The kiddie pool will work fine. Lots of people (including myself) use them.
I also use old cardboard boxes and make my own brooders out of pvc piping and deer netting.
The sky is pretty much the limit as far as creative ideas on brooders.
Your main concern is to make sure the chicks are protected agains drafts and predators.

Also, if you will be allowing your chickens to go underneath your coop, understand that they will sometimes lay eggs there as well.
If you don't mind crawling underneath to retrieve eggs, then it's no problem.

My chickens lay in the nest boxes, but if they lay outside in the bushes, the eggs are a free meal for my dogs.

And don't stress too much about your nest boxes cuz the sky is the limit there, too.
I use Tidy Cat litter containers, old book shelves, old planters, cardboard boxes, etc.

Enjoy your chickies!!


This is an old bookshelf that we moved to the coop to use as nest boxes.





They actually love to lay eggs in the planter pot in the corner.





I had the cat litter boxes on the floor for my Silkies to lay in since they didn't like jumping up into the nest boxes.



Some old furniture boxes taped together for a kind of chick condo effect.
Kept outside in the shed.







The kiddie pool brooder (I use this one in the house).

 

[judyki2004]

Wow! The sigh of the turkeys grazing is just awesome! The coop looks like will be very nice, please keep us posted!

 

[NewChickHere]

Thank you for the compliments and info. We definitely do have the red lamp ready to hang and a thermometer too. We will be have it all done tonight and I'm excited just in case they come early.

@BuffBrahmaBoy-thanks for the info about the towel first. I had read somewhere about putting the shavings down first and then a puppy pad or 2 for that exact reason, and it is suppose to help them find their food real easy those first couple days too. But I like your idea well too. I definitely don't want any of them doing the splits.

So sorry you lost that one.

@AlienChick- I love all your pictures. It looks like you have been very resourceful with items for your chickens. That is what we are needing to do. As for the idea of the hens laying under the coop, no....I don't think I'm particularly fond of the idea of crawling around under there for eggs. Hm? We go the idea because our neighbor has chickens and they are always laying under her car for shade. So I thought using that same "footprint" of the coop for shade would work great without taking up extra space. Well, is there anyway to discourage them from laying under there....or maybe a better question, is there any way of ENCOURAGING them to lay more in the nest boxes? I have heard of golf balls and fake ets eggs. Do those work?

@Judy- I do love looking at the turkeys and we enjoy watching them, but you don't think I need to be concerned about any of their poops or germs everywhere do you, before I put my girls out there?

 

[judyki2004]

of course your concerns are valid... but here we don't have that kind of wild animals (such as turkeys, geese or deers ) gazing in our backyard we only have some small birds, coqui (an endemic tiny frog, toads & lizards lol )

 

[foxinachickenhouse]

Our nest boxes are about 12 inches up from the floor level, entire coop is raised two feet and I like them being raised just slightly. They can't scratch stuff into the boxes this way, though they try.

We have our coop raised so they can get underneath too and I realized about 3/4 into the building project about the egg under the coop problem. Occasionally it does happen, especially with new layers, and I have to get under there and get the egg. I made one long side of the area into a flap that can be removed. Basically just framed the hardware cloth and attached the frame with wing nuts and carriage bolts. If they lay under there I can remove that panel and get the egg with the help of a rake. It works petty well. I wouldn't change anything. They love having the extra shady space in the summer.

 

[Chesca]

I have a question. I'm new to the chickens too, I'm planning on having 5. could I just do one big nest box at about 21" or should I really make 2 separate ones? thanks!

 

[enjoyin' my chickens]

I have a question. I'm new to the chickens too, I'm planning on having 5. could I just do one big nest box at about 21" or should I really make 2 separate ones? thanks!

One nest box should be fine for 5 ladies. They will share it. My nest boxes are roughly 12 by 13 inches and in the short side 9 inches high. I hope that this helps you.