Coop In Progress

[Rivers Edge Homestead]

If you did framed panes of plexi, hinged at the bottoms to swing in, with maybe a chain to keep them from opening further, you'd still have light, good ventilation, and no rain/snow would blow in.

How far above the roosts are the green squares?

So far we have not put anything but the hardware cloth covering those “windows” along the top of the wall. We’ve had some really heavy rain and wind and it has stayed completely dry in there! So now we’re wondering if we don’t need to cover them because of the roof overhang on that side. The green squares in the picture are on the wall opposite the roosting bars and are about a foot or so above the highest bar. Total outer measurement of the floor is 8’x8’. We adopted a small flock of 4 fully grown chickens from a friend and they are doing quite well so far. We got the roosting bars in and used a couple litter boxes for nesting boxes for the time being. We picked up a smaller coop/hutch to keep our youngsters in that the big ones can’t fit into so the littlest ones have a place to escape if they need to till they are a bit bigger.

 

[aart]

We got the roosting bars in

Those look a bit small in diameter, guessing they are an inch?
Really want minimum of 1 1/2".

 

[Rivers Edge Homestead]

Those look a bit small in diameter, guessing they are an inch?
Really want minimum of 1 1/2".

Oh really? Hadn’t even thought about that. The previous coop we had bought used but had to part with when we moved out of state had bars only half an inch in diameter that bowed under the chickens We knew that didn’t look right so we thought these were good in comparison because they are solid.