I am building our first coop and have some questions for you more experienced folks. We currently have 8 chicks. Nesting boxes: how big and off the floor or not and how many? Pop door, I guess that's what its called (access door from run to coop): How big of an opening, horizontal. Straw or shavings? I have built an a frame coop/run from a wooden swingset frame, 13'LX8'H. The top 4' is the coop and the bottom 4' the run. Thanks for the input
I built my nest box 14" square with a 4 inch lip to keep bedding and eggs in. And for 8 chicks a couple boxes should work because hens share. My pop door is 12" square. As for bedding alot of people use pine shavings or pellets as long as its not cedar you can use what works best. You can search the deep litter method and see if that might work. And sand seems to be popular also. Good luck with your chicks!!!!
I have my nest boxes 12"wide 15"deep15"tall (I have LF chickens in there). My pop door is about 10"x12". I prefer shavings for bedding. I have 10 nest boxes for 15 layers and they actually use 6 of them. I used to have 40 layers, but I sold most of them off, that's why I had so many. My boxes are about 3' off the floor with a 6" lip to keep bedding in and give them more privacy. With only a 3" lip they were kicking eggs out of the nest boxes. I had some RSLs that liked using my nest boxes for dust baths - they never kicked the bedding out w/ the 6" lip.
