Coop Building Reference Table....(suggestion area only)

[Anny]

This is a wonderful wonderful wonderful idea!

 

[kimbobim]

b. Coop Site Survey: When picking a spot, what are some of the things you should think about?

What a great thread!

First of all, I should say that we live on a flat half-acre semi-rural lot. We are building a 7 x 12 coop for 12 standard sized chickens (RIR, Barred Rock, Wyandotte, Sex Links). It has a 3.5 x 2.5 ft storage area acessible from the outside, and a 3.5 x 2.5 foot alcove that will be separated by a chicken-wire gate for when we have younger girls, or an injured bird that needs to be separated (sick birds will be taken care of in the garage).

When we placed our coop and run, we considered the following:

* Proximity to our compost bins, for coop poop and shavings.
* Proximity to our garden - for throwing weeds, thinned plants, clippings, etc., into the run.
* Distance to the water source.
* Distance from our main back door - it's going to be a long, cold hike in the winter if we put it too far away from the house (we're in Utah).
* Being able to see the coop and run from our kitchen windows.
* Shade for the summer - we'll be planting a couple of fruit trees for shade.
* Distance from our neighbor's house - our city's code says it must be at least 50 feet away from their house. Our coop is more like 100 feet away.
* Wind directions, sheltered by a solid fence - important for the cold winter winds we have.
* Accessibility to two different run areas - one is an 18 x 10 foot run with a roof over part of it (will have netting of some sort over the rest), the other is a 40 x 35 foot area that the coop is built inside of, it's enclosed by 6-foot tall chain link fences (no roof or netting). The 18 x 10 ft run is accessed via the pop door. We also let the ladies out daily to free range in the rest of the back yard.

I think that's it. I'd love to see the ventilation formula/recommendations and see if we got anywhere close.

thanks for doing this!

edited to add:

Also, could we have recommendations for nesting box mounting height (from the floor), and roost heights? I know how many linear inches per bird (12 per standard bird) for roosts, but have had a hard time finding recommendations for how high off the floor to make the roosts. One last thing - is there going to be a section on materials? Most people recommend using vinyl flooring, but there seems to be a lot of questions on this section about painting the interior of coops, what type of paint to use, etc. Maybe some info on how to make the coop easier to clean/sanitize.

 

[Peregrine]

This is such a terriffic idea! I can't count how many hours I've spent going through post after post, trying to figure out how to build my coop!

It would be so nice to have all the basic info in one spot.

About nesting boxes, the posts I've found made me decide to build mine 14" cubed for standard size chickens. My chicks are only 12 weeks old, so I haven't actually built mine yet. Does this sound about average to everyone?

 

[redhawkou812]

Peregine, that's sounds good to me. Mine are a little larger, but only because of the materials I used. They're 16" on the T&G walls, but only 14" at the base & top rails.

 

[River Lizard]

Just an update, as soon as I get the main chicken coop finished so it's ready to be used, I'll hit this project hard; just haven't had the time to sit down at the computer and organize the information that's been posted so far. My apology for getting behind on this, but I hope you can understand I'm under a deadline on my chicken coop so I'm putting all my free time into it.

 

[Ladyhawke1]

I will never forgive my junior and high schools for only allowing me to take sewing and cooking classes.

The guys got all the good stuff.

What so hard and mysterious about cooking and sewing.

I need carpentry skills including plumbing etc. I have to start learning from the nails on up. Harump!

 

[kagedgoddess]

a suggestion about the cold/hot zones and the different requirements for ventialation and insulation :
maybe someone could look at the planting zones and correlate that to the coop designs, as in "i built this coop, it'll work well in zones 3,4,5." it seems most of us have gardens so we probably know our planting zones? if not its easy to find. every seed packet has it just about.

 

[hearthnsoul]

I would so love this! We started our coop this week and let me tell you, we have made mistakes with no plans, and they just are so time consuming. I spend alot of time in the search area here to find out where we go wrong and fix the best we can. One place to view,..that would be amazing

 

[patandchickens]

Guys, you are not going to find a useful equation or table or anything like that for ventilation requirements.

What matters to the chickens is adequate removal of humidity and ammonia to maintain healthy air quality. From an engineering point of view, this is a matter of air exchange rate.

What minimum air exchange rate you need to ensure good air quality is not a single magic number, it depends on things like how many chickens you got in what size space, and how much of their poo is deposited indoors, how long it remains there, what your climate's humidity is like, etc etc.

And even more unfortunately, the minimum sized vent area that's required to give you a particular target air exchange rate ALSO depends on a whole buncha factors. For instance, how breezy is the site where the coop is located (both on average, and on a typical nonbreezy day -- both matter).

Therefore, there is no one-size-fits all answer, not even in a ballpark sense.

I truly, truly think the only intelligent advice that can be given on the subject is simply to build as much as you can and (except maybe in very hot climates) have it closeable so you can reduce it to whatever is appropriate in cold weather. That, plus sample figures for what is generally 'enough' in some typical situations, is really the best you're gonna get, honest.

Pat

 

[River Lizard]

Pat,

You're right as far as nailing down a set figure for ventilation. CFM's deal with so many different things. Heat generated items(such as heat lamps, amount of chickens, square footage of building, etc.. the list goes on. But we could probably touch on the general over view of it. Ventilation vents, fan locations, etc..

IMO setting up the fan in a location that draws cooler air and pushes it into the coop is the way to go vs pulling out the air. I can only imagine what the fan would look like after about a year of pulling the dust out of the coop. If you run positive pressure into the coop, this will also force the hot dusty air out a properly installed vent.
This is what I'm aiming to do with my coop. I'm considering pulling from underneath my coop since it sits only a few inches off the ground and the air should be several degrees cooler under there. It will also help keep the moisture down under the coop too, to help preserve the wood structure longer.