Coop design tips for cold weather (wanted tips)

[speckledhen]

Ideally, you would not raise the meat birds with the layers and in an 8x8, but you did mention dividing up the room so that would take care of the different feeding needs. There would not really be enough room in an 8x8 if you had to divide it up. I dont know much more about meat birds so someone else will need to address that.
In my opinion, you should go ahead with the larger building. I started with an 8x8 and then added another 12' onto that when the hobby took off. This is addicting! It's easier to just go ahead and add a few more feet up front.

 

[Firefyter-Emt]

Ok, this is new to me, I had not thought about needing diffrent food. Now if I make my plans to build the coop 8'x12' with a wire partition that splits the coop into one 5'x12' coop and a 3'x12' coop I now have the "ideal" space for fifteen layers on the larger side and nine on the smaller side. This sounds lke a good design as I could easily wall off the smaller side in the winter with three panels if I found the need.

Now that the living quarters are figured out, there is no problems with letting them all have the full run of the pen, Right? This layout would allow me to have two doors to lead out into the pen from each coop side too. Inside the coop I can just add a door frame with hardware cloth to get into the smaller coop on the back side.

Now my other plan is to add fencing or hardware cloth at the 8' height so that the coop is more of a box and they can not get into the rafters. I figure if I do this I can stop any "fly-overs" plus it will keep the chickens safe from any roofing nails. The added bonus is one more "safety layer" if something tries to gain access thru the roof area venting.