I'm sooooo eggcited! After months of drawing out ideas on dinner napkins, and stomping around in the unused part of our 1.5 acre yard with a measuring tape....my hubby finally drew up the plans for the new coop!!! It will feature a 8' x 12' fully enclosed predator proof coop which will open into a wire enclosed ,tarp covered (until we can afford some greenhouse roofing) covered patio that is also 8' x 12'. The patio will be where the water nipple system will be , also the hanging feeders and kiddy pool dust bowl. There will be two gate doors going to two fully wire enclosed runs that are 6' x 24'. The coop itself will have wire covered roof vents, and two windows , all of which is wire covered. During the winter we will cover those windows with heavy duty clear plastic. The feature I'm most eggcited about is the poop shoot! When it's time to clean the coop the we will open the inside door on the outer wall and sweep the poop out into a chute that will be made out of a hinge lidded trash can. After closing the interior door we'll go outside and raise the lid on the trash can and it will dump straight into my compost pile!!!If this feature works I'll officially declare my husband a genius! Oh, guess I should say, our yard is on a hill so the coop will be built up about 1/2 ft and the compost pile is on the down side of the hill and the runs are actually on the same level as the coop ( the only level spot in the yard!) When it rains the runoff will be able to run under the coop. There will be steps up to the human door and the chicken door will have a ramp. After all the construction is done we plan on installing rain barrels to help with getting water to the coop and the landscaping that will be planted around the run to help with predator proofing. Currently we have 9 girls. Looking at adding up to but no more than10 this spring (AFTER the coop is built...ok maybe early summer ). That gives us a max amount of 19 in the coop. When the new hens start laying we plan on culling our 5 white leghorns which will take us back down to 14 girls. If my hubby did the math right that gives us 5.02 sq ft per hen at max capacity and 6.8 sq ft at goal capacity in the enclosed coop. We plan on putting the biddy box (a first) on our back deck, then as they get larger we'll move it to Run B. The older girls can hangout in Run A. After everybody gets used to each other and the chicks are alot bigger then we can just open the gate up and let them into the big coop. At that point we'll close off one run and reseed it while everybody hangs out in the other. We will use the old coop as an isolation coop if needed (no more M.A.S.H. tent!) Hopefully we have thought of everything needed to keep the coyote and hawks away from our girls and at the same time made it easier to maintain the coop and enjoy hanging out with our girls!
Wow, I like your coop plans! It sounds like you all have put an enormous amount of thought into it. The poop shoots going direct into your compost is a nice touch (our coop has a poop shoot too but we have to haul what we take out of the coop to the compost). When you start building, it would be nice to see progress pictures if you would like to share them. Good luck with your plans and keep us posted!
You really thought this one out and looks great, but the only mod. I would suggest, and this is land permitting is to try to make the runs squarer. The squarer the run the less fence/wire you need per square foot of run. Rectangle run is more wire per sqft. The uncovered part of your run is 24x 12 so 288 sqft, and in that part, with the center divider, you have 96 ft of wire. If you come closer to square say 20x 16 still with the divder you now get 320sqft and now you are using 92 ft of wire. So 40 more sqft with 4ft less wire. Just a tweak and again I don't know how your land is set up. Like every one else, love to see how it turns out, post photos pls.
