Coop in progress! Advice needed.

[TinyLittleFarm]

Hi everyone.

Our coop is getting there. DH is building it. As you can see, it is currently in our driveway. It will have wheels (yes I know it's big for having wheels. We have a very sturdy tractor to pull it). The idea is that we would like it out in the far end of the yard (we have sort of a big yard--a few acres) during nice weather and we'd like to be able to pull it up closer to the house during the winter. We live in Wisconsin. Anyway, you can see the coop is raised with an attached run. There will be an additional run area in the yard, but the attached run is 14x8, if you could the area under the coop. There will be 10 chickens who live here. The coop itself is 7X8. It will be fully insulated. We will also have a 2 foot skirt of hardware cloth to deter predators.

I'm looking for any advice you can offer, but specifically about the following things:

1) Where would you put the human door to the run?
2) Since the coop is raised, I don't want to have to climb in there very often. It is 5 feet tall in the highest spot, so we can certainly go in there, but I'd like to be able to clean out under the roosts without hopping in. Where would you put the roosts and what do you think is the best strategy for making clean up easy?

Thank you!

 

[ChickenToes]

It looks like a nice setup!

I don't really think it matter all that much where you put the human door in the run.

For the coop, I would put the roosts as close to the human door as possible, then put droppings boards underneath them. That way you could reach in and remove the boards without having to step into the coop. Instead of having really long roosts, maybe put shorter ones on both sides of the door, so the droppings boards don't have to be really long and unmanageable.

I would suggest some way of removing the boards from the outside, but since the coop is raised, I'm not sure that's a great idea. The hardware cloth skirting along the bottom will keep out some predators, but not the really determined ones.

 

[Monk]

It's hard to visualize the run, pop door, and the interior layout to offer any suggestions. But I would definately trust your judgement, it's an awesome job so far!

I would design it for cleaning the entire coop from outside though...

 

[teach1rusl]

I really only see two viable option for the roosts, and neither is really any easier to access for cleaning. One would be the "back" wall (opposite where you have the people door), extending in front of the window from wall to wall, the other is wall to wall above the nest boxes. A dropping board will make clean up easy and quick, but you're going to have to enter to take care of things. So I'd just plan on keeping a small step ladder handy, or make a rough wooden set of two steps that could be moved when the coop is moved, 'cause I don't see you getting out of going into the coop to clean...lol. Some have done roll out dropping boards with a long narrow door, but you're too far along in construction for that. It looks great though...