Coop building - I might need some advice and/or ideas.

[sarahlorrain]

I will need to take some pictures, but the camera must be found the batteries charged before I can do that.

We are getting baby chicks tomorrow and so we need to finish their coop and run.

I have two coops to work with, one is partially built and one is "finished" but both will need some changes to make them work for us.

The finished one used to be used for guineas, but I'm in the process of cleaning it (by cleaning it I mean trying to remove all of the old guinea poop). The problem is, the floor (it's a raised coop) is made of wood pallets, as are two of the sides, In the original design, there is wire mesh on top of the floor pallets and on the bottom. The idea is you slide big pieces of cardboard into the floor from each end. The poop falls through the top wire mesh onto the cardboard which is resting on the bottom wire mesh. When the cardboard gets icky, you just slide it out, dispose of it and slide in new cardboard. The problem, I found today, is that quite a big of poop gets stuck here and there in the nooks and corners of the wood pallets and I don't think I can get it all out unless I can get hubby to put it on its end so I can spray from the bottom. What I'm thinking might be best is if I remove the wall pallets and replace them with plywood, install plywood over the existing floor and then plan to put down pine shavings or hay for litter and have a door so that I can use a hoe or something to scrap out the litter and put in new.

I really need to take pictures of what I have because it's really confusing. I'm planning for one coop to be for the nest boxes and the other to be for roosting, but we are going to modify both so that they will be connected together and be one big coop, accessible by us humans from both ends.

My other concern, is - do you think I could get sick from cleaning all of this old guinea poo? I have been spraying it with the hose so as to minimize dust, but there was a lot of dust when I removed the cardboard that was there. The previous owner said that their guineas hadn't used it in quite some time, and once we got it home we discovered that there was an old bird nest in there and two dead birds.

Gross.

 

[MonsterClucker]

I dont think you can get sick unless your eating the poop lol. but i always wear a fave mask or bandanna over my face just incase anything does go flying around.

 

[sarahlorrain]

Yeah, I was mostly worried about inhaling particles or something. I really need to find my camera. I want to show you guys what I have to work with. I want to make it as good as possible, given what I have to work with.

 

[MonsterClucker]

Im Subd, so when u get the pics up ill definitely check em out.

 

[sarahlorrain]

Yay! Found the camera and there was just enough juice left in the batteries to take pics and upload them to the computer.

This first picture is of one coop that I'm not too concerned with now. The nest boxes are going to go here. The open side facing the camera is going to have a door for us humans to go in and gather eggs. There will be a wood floor as well. The other coop with be joined with this one on the opposite end. Obviously it will all be finished and will be safe, warm etc. Don't worry!



These next three pictures are different angles of the other coop that used to be a coop for guineas.



As you can see, this is a raised coop with a run underneath it. There are doors for those two open spaces that you see on this end, I have just taken them off for cleaning. There is a way for the chickens from the top part to the bottom part through a hole/ramp in the floor. If I keep the bottom part accessible for the chickens, if will not be accessible from the inside of the coop. As you can see, the floor is made of wooden pallets. There is wire mesh on top and on the bottom for poop to fall through. I really don't like this design at all.


This long side of the coop is made of pallets with wire mesh on the inside. This is one reason I'm concerned about the temperature in the winter. The other side of the coop is pallets and a piece of plywood, as you can see in the next picture.


This end of the coop has a piece of plywood for the wall, but I took it off for cleaning. Like I said one end of this coop will join with the other coop to make one big one. I'm trying to figure out what to do about the floor to make cleaning easiest. The chickens will roost in this one. We will also be making a large run for them and hope to be able to let them have free run of our fenced in back yard when we are outside working in the garden and whatnot. We have two small dogs, one of which has experienced chickens before and is no worry, but the other one is a younger, new dog and we don't know how he is going to behave. We'll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it.

So, if you have any suggestions, critiques, etc, please lay on them me!!!

 

[MonsterClucker]

I like the idea of putting those two together, I would just make sure that the roosting coop is easy to clean. Both really but the roosting coop is where most of the poop will be. The area underneath, I.would just use as a poop area and just rake it out or slide something under there to make cleaing easy.

I'm putting together the designs for my second coop now. I have a thread I'm this section with a video showing my coop and my plans. its still on page 1. you should check it out, maybe it'll give you an idea or two.

like what I'm seeing so far. keep is updated.

 

[sarahlorrain]

Well, we ended up changing our plans. We decided to dismantle the coop made out of pallets and use the lumber to finish out the other coop. I'm glad too because the coop we are taking apart seems to have a black widow problem. We found and killed two huge ones today!