Coop building help please

[fiddleblue]

Nest boxes size: you might want to get the book "Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens" which has details on this as well as so many other aspects of having chickens. Page 35 of this book recommends 12 inch wide by 14 inch high by 12 inch deep for standard chickens, 14 wide by 14 high by 12 deep for heavier breeds. I made mine the latter size and it's nice because sometimes two hens will squeeze into one nest box and they CAN both fit! A Silver Laced Wyandotte and a giant LIght Brahma both fit in one of the 14 by 14 by 12.

 

[eggboy]

Each standard size chicken needs 2 feet of space in the coop and bantams need 1 foot. In the chicken run standard size chickens need 4 feet of space ea. and bantams need 2.

 

[Nostalchic]

Hey pkforever, we looked at several books when we were planning our coop which were SORT of helpful but, honestly, the coop pages on this site are just fantastic. Take some time to look thru them - a lot of really great pictures, stories, explanations for why and how are there, with humor and good sense (and occasionally regrets/mistakes are listed - very helpful!) and quite a few have detailed drawings and plans. I spent hours looking thru them and it was fun, then I sat down and drew out what I thought would work out best for us. If you have the space, bigger is better. 4 square feet of interior space for each standard chicken is just sufficient, and I haven't seen a single person on here who regrets having made the coop too big!

 

[SoJoChickens]

This link has plans for a great little coop. I haven't built this plan but others on the forum have.

http://poultry.purinamills.com/stellent … 007989.pdf

 

[elmo]

Quote:
That sounds too small to me. I like to use the 4 square foot per chicken in the coop plus 10 square foot per chicken in the run as minimums, and you'll never be sorry if you can build bigger than this. These are the guidelines I use in housing my tiny bantams, too. Remember, the higher the chicken density in housing, the more work for the chicken keeper to maintain a healthy environment.

So for 3 chickens, a 4' by 4' coop would be adequate, plus a run measuring 4' x 8'. If you make the coop raised so that there's run space underneath, you could build the whole thing with a 4' by 8' footprint. The Garden Coop is a design along these lines:


http://www.thegardencoop.com/


But then there would be no real room for more chickens....

 

[kiwiegg]

I just got the 'Building Chicken Coops for Dummies" book - it's great. There are detailed actual building plans, not just sketches as mentioned in previous posts - whats with that? I want plans not art!!! There is plenty of extra info too - I think it's good value for money and I'm a real tightwad! If you go to Amazon.com you can take a look inside the book, I always think it's helpful to see the table of contents. Then buy it through BYC (if you want!). I would recommend this book to you as I also was getting very frustrated with the lack of quality plans out there. Good luck!

 

[elmo]

Quote:
For three chickens, one nestbox is plenty. I use plastic storage bins because they're easy to clean and very easy to replace the bedding frequently (just dump the contents out in the composter, dust with a little DE or poultry dust, and add fresh bedding).

 

[gryeyes]

Quote:
X 2. Emphatically!

 

[MimiChick]

Check my BYC page to see a pic of my first coop. It was perfectly adequate for 3-4 chickens and VERY secure. There's also a link to where to get detailed plans for it. It's a version of the garden coop. If you're handy, you could probably adjust it to make it bigger.
HOWEVER, unless you're restricted to no more than 4 chickens because of where you live, chicken math says you will want MORE CHICKENS. That's what happened to me

and this summer I had to build a bigger coop (It's probably still not big enough though

). Always take chicken math into account when planning for chickens

. Good luck.