Coop thoughts

[nuchickontheblock]

Another idea for those with limited building experience. We had a local high school building trades program build our 5 x 6 coop for us. The kids helped with the design and all we had to pay was for the materials. Some of the students had chickens at home and had some great ideas and suggestions for the design. I think their program now builds a few different size/style coops and sells them in the community. They built it like they would a home construction and did a great job.

 

[amenfarm]

What about getting one of those cute sheds from lowes or home depot? a few additions-roosts and nest boxes, add ventaltion, a pop hole,and make a run- your done. I think some of them are cute--but my hubbie thinks they are too expensive--so I'm still wanting for him to build mine. forgot to add the above post is also a great idea, we are getting a free play house to modify into a little coop that was built a few years ago by the shop dept. at a local high school. It is very heavy and we are having to wait until the ground freezes-over to move it or it dries up completely. Since we are having flash floods about every other week , I'm not sure when that will be.

 

[BronzeStar]

I just looked at one of the coops in the coops section where a local HS built it didn't pay attention to the name of whose coop it was if it was yours (nuchickenontheblock) it is nice.

I am also looking at possible sheds to use but as you stated they get really expensive really quickly and for that price I could just have a coop built I suppose.

 

[hispoptart]

Anyone ever order a coop from www.chickensaloon.com I will have 4 Buff Orpingtons and the wife wants a "pretty" coop or one that doesn't look like it was built from scrap lumber, which pretty much means that we are going to have to buy one lol. Currently considering this onehttp://chickensaloon.com/the-tavern-backyard-chicken-coop/

I believe it would be sufficient for the amount of chickens I will have over 130 sq ft of run room and over 50 sq foot of coop room. with external nesting boxes.

Any thoughts or comments

We have almost the same exact coop as that one. We have 2 RIR and 2BR in it and they do just fine. We don't close the pop door at night and they are out free ranging all day till they put themselves to bed at night. Most of the time I don't even close the door to the small run area so they just get up in the morning and come and go as they please till bedtime. (I know that's a risk I am taking so please no comments on that) When I do close the door they are quite cranky with me when I let them out in the morning. With that said, if I planned to keep them locked up in there all the time then yes I would say it is to small and they probably would be fighting. We plan to build something bigger this spring, so I would say put that money towards something bigger now instead of spending that kind of money just to realize you will need to spend that plus more when the chickens are not happy.

 

[HEChicken]

8X8 would be nice and might be workable in the space we have set for it, as long as it stays under 10X10 we don't need a permit.

You're getting the hang of this chicken math thing. Notice how in just a few days you've gone from a 2x2 coop to talking about 10x10?

 

[BronzeStar]

What I find most interesting is that if you search for chicken coops on line I have yet to find ANY pre-fab chicken coops that follow the 4 sq ft rule. I doubt that ALL of these companies are out to just make a quick buck off the unsuspecting customer in fact I would venture that many of them have a background in chicken raising. What am I missing here. I'm all about giving my chickens more room than they need and not crowding them into "just enough" space, but it does make it a little more confusing when looking for ideas to base our coop off of.

 

[HEChicken]

I won't entirely disagree with you on the space requirements but I do think it is all about perspective. My first coop was an A-Frame with a 4x4 footprint and 4' high too. It had an attached 6x4x4(h) run that I didn't use at first (I later set the whole thing up as a broody coop/run and it worked fantastic for that but that's a whole 'nother story.) Anyways.....the original coop was where my chickies slept at night. During the day they free-ranged the entire backyard. The coop originally had no roost (It was given to me off freecycle) so I installed a roost as high as I could go while still giving them head room. At one point I had 9 chooks and they ALL slept in that little bitty coop with NO issues. With a 4x4 footprint, I shouldn't have had more than 4 birds in there but 9 had no issues. Why? Because ALL they did in that coop is sleep. Their food, water, nest box and free-range were elsewhere. During the day they had plenty of space and at night all they were doing was piling onto the roost and going to sleep. In fact, I would venture to say that they were warmer in that coop during the winter than in my current, much larger space, because being so close together and having limited space to heat, they could keep it toasty warm. I even experimented by moving their water bowl in there at night one January and it never froze, even in single digit temps. I digress...

This is NOT to say I am recommending going with a smaller space. If the range during the day is limited, you will have issues cramming birds into such a small space. My set up only worked because I wasn't using that as the space for food etc. Part of the "4-square-foot" rule takes into account space needed for nest boxes, feeder, waterer and so on, which mine did not have.

The last thought I will leave you with is that crowded birds end up being stressed birds, and stressed birds typically have a lot of "issues". You will hear about problems integrating, bullying, feather-picking etc. I never had those problems but if my girls weren't out free-ranging all day and were confined to that 4x4 coop and attached 4x6 run, I might have experienced those things even if I had half the number of birds.

 

[BronzeStar]

I'm currently planning out the design of my coop in google sketchup and it is looking like a 5Lx5WX4H coop with externally mounted nesting boxes so really the only thing that will be in that 5x5 space is water/food and roost. The run will be 10LX5W. I imagine by any measurement that will be sufficient for 4 birds. It just got me thinking why such a large disconnect between what is being published in books like raising chickens for dummies and info given on this site and coop manufacturers, you would think that they would at least be close in size measurement.

 

[citychickx6]

Just a thought but Home Depot and Lowes have clearances on the display sheds every now and again.
If I could have gotten it into my back yard I would have had a 8x10 barn style that was 10 ft tall for 500 dollars.

 

[BronzeStar]

We actually went and looked at both of those yesterday for sheds and we found a couple but we run into the same issue of getting it into our yard.