Coop Advice needed for first time chicken owner in CAMBODIA

[kidkhmer]

Hi Everybody,

We got impulsive on the weekend and went out and bought some little chickens that we are told are from Malaysia ( we live in Cambodia ). They are definitely bantums as they are small and the female almost looks like a pigeon except for the tail feathers ! We all love the little buggers already . We have a wide open villa with huge French doors opening into the courtyard and yesterday afternoon they walked up the few stairs, into the house and sat down on the floor near me and watched the end of a DVD with me ! Classic. Very gentle little things. Anyways...now I have to build a safe house for them ( one male, one female - possible 2 more females to come if we het hooked

and here are the challenges;

a) It's insanely hot here most of the year ( over 40c and humid ) and soon the wet season starts here so it rains torrential some days. I need a good design for this climate. I want to be able to hose it out easily and their sleeping area etc has to be waterproof without being too hot. Obviously I will elevate it and use alot of mesh and the good thing is here in Cambodia whilst unfortunately we do not have treated pine to work with, materials and labour are cheap ! I have trawled all over this great site and so far I really like the gist this simple design ;

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=20741-recycled-tractor

Is the mesh floor on this design ok for their feet ?

b) We have many predators but the main ones are cats. This morning I let them out, gave them some rice and went to get a juice and when I came back 2 mins later a cat was on the next door roof stalking them. The cat copped a torrent of water from the hose but no doubt will be back now it knows we have birds. We also have supersized rats.

c) We do not have any lawn but rather our ( quite large ) garden is completely tiled. I am just interested to know how important foraging / scratching around is to Chickens ? There are a few areas where they can get into garden beds and make a mess which doesn't really worry me. The garden itself is actually nice and shady which is a big plus. Should I put straw down on the coop to give them a bit of a feel for nature ?

d) Whilst labour and materials are cheap, it can be hard to get an exact plan across to your handyman here. They like to take off on tangents, cut corners and generally do not sit back and go " how can I make this better / improve / satisfy the customer etc". The amounts of times I have had stuff made here and had to send it back etc etc....

Any tips or links to suitable designs will be greatly appreciated. I need to get cracking on this. I am totally open to any ideas. My wife is khmer and has had chickens most of her life but they are free range over here ( hell - I live in downtown Phnom Penh in a nice area and people have their chooks running around out in the street in front of my house ) so whilst I am sure she knows the ins and outs of caring for them, I just want to build them a simple and easily maintained coop .

Thanks for your help for this newbie.

KK

 

[Ms. Cluckingly]

I have no ideas for you, but hopefully someone on here will. I just wanted to say welcome!!

 

[patandchickens]

Hi, welcome to BYC!

Quote:
Google "serama chickens", that sounds like what you've got

Truthfully I am not sure what to say about your coop questions, I think the smartest thing to do would be to find some other people in your region who keep seramas and see what THEY do for accommodations. See if they have had any problems with a mesh floor, what size mesh, whether they use a solid floor with some bedding on it instead, whether to let them loose in the garden, etc.

If torrential rain is an issue, you might consider making the roof overhang on the coop much MUCH bigger than the original design (not so much that it becomes unstable or blows over, I mean, but enough to reduce the amount of rain going in.)

b) We have many predators but the main ones are cats. This morning I let them out, gave them some rice and went to get a juice and when I came back 2 mins later a cat was on the next door roof stalking them. The cat copped a torrent of water from the hose but no doubt will be back now it knows we have birds. We also have supersized rats.

Cats aren't terrifically good at clawing apart wire mesh. Rats are another matter. I would not use anything larger than 1/2" mesh ANYWHERE on the coop when there is a known rat problem, and really 1/4" would be a lot safer. It is possible you may need to add metal flashing on the underparts of the coop, or anywhere else a rat might feel comfy enough to sit and gnaw awhile, to keep them from going through the wooden part of the coop. To some extent you may need to just keep a close eye on how things go and be prepared to beef it up on short notice if you notice gnaw marks.

d) Whilst labour and materials are cheap, it can be hard to get an exact plan across to your handyman here. They like to take off on tangents, cut corners and generally do not sit back and go " how can I make this better / improve / satisfy the customer etc". The amounts of times I have had stuff made here and had to send it back etc etc....

You should be able to make it yourself. Really it is just a chicken coop

, it does not have to be millimetre-exact. Use screws not nails, if possible; measure twice cut once; and you can definitely whang something respectable-looking together

Good luck, have fun,

Pat​

 

[WoodlandWoman]

That's the basic style of housing I was going to suggest. A lot of people that live in the hotter areas of the US like that style of coop.

For the rains, Pat gave a great suggestion for making sure you have some overhang on the roof. A lot of times people forget that and then have a problem with rain blowing in. For the solid side walls of the roost area, I would be looking for them to extend enough to prevent driving rain from coming in, but no farther than you really need them to, to allow as much heat to escape as possible.

How is the drainage where you are? Does it get really muddy during the rains, too? We have enough trouble just with our rainy season. If that's a problem, you might think about adding a thick layer of sand in the bottom of the run, to keep it dryer during the rains, too. You'd need a board around the bottom, to keep it in.

Pat already gave great advice on keeping rats out.

If you can show the person building the coop a picture of what you want, I think that will help a lot. I would especially stress the size of the mesh you want used, to keep out rats. That would be one construction error that could be deadly. Other things you could probably work around.