Designing Coop- Send advice!

[BlessedChaosHomestead]

So we are designing our coop.
Back story:
We got 6 BO "hens" in Mar. starting our chicken journey. Couple weeks later grabbed a couple Cochin hens.
We now currently have 22 chickens, 2 Turkeys, 4 ducks & 2 rabbits. lol (Also 3 of our BO hens turned out to be roosters.)

Built a chicken tractor because plan was to free range them. Well advice from locals say not to, because of predators. So we hope to get the moveable fencing to free range them that way.
The chicken tractor is completed; hardware cloth & all. But it was not built for this many chickens nor did we add a roost or nesting boxes. ::
We were going to redesign the tractor to be the coop; expanding it but were gifted a tilt trailer & 20+ pallets. So now the plan is to get as many free pallets as we can & build it from there keeping the tractor for future meat chickens, new additions & what not. Mainly because this needs to be as inexpensive as possible due to other reasons.

We have also finished the permanent fencing area so the coop will butt up to that making it easy for them to come & go.
With all that stated now:

• What is the absolute musts we need to incorporate?

• The "I wish I had known about this before I built mine" ideas/advice?

I have a general idea of what I would like. I know we need roosts, & nesting boxes.
Ideally I would like to have a small area to keep their feed secure, that way it's all in one area instead of having to transport it from the garage mainly during weather events. I also would like to put linoleum or some flooring of the like in it so as to make it easier to clean. (Hoping to do the deep litter method.)

Advice welcome & encouraged!! lololol
We also live in East TN; where the summers get very hot (high 90 temps) but winters can be down in the teens to single digits. We also get high wind.

I can try to post pics of the design we draw up for better advice & the chicken tractor at a later date.

 

[My Bagurks]

I’m in central Alabama so our climate and I’m sure a lot of predators are similar.

The absolute musts are security and ventilation.

What direction the permanent coop faces will help with the construction. My coop is 16ft long and 4 feet wide. I have two doors on the south facing 16ft wall. Each opening is 4 feet wide and one has a door that stays open all summer and then mostly shit in winter.

With our climate, you can go for more of an open design. Or at least a LOT of ventilation. They need a big enough shaded area to get out of the sun aside from the coop. And shading the area around the door(s) would be a good idea to help the coop stay tolerable.

I built mine on a budget so I repurposed some old fencing to cover from ground to about 3 feet and then covered it with chicken wire extending up to the roof of the run. Unless you could seal the pallets, I wouldn’t depend on just those for the coop. The gaps can make it drafty. You need the coop to breath but a constant heavy flow of air can cause problems especially in the winter.


As far as security, you want a hardware cloth apron around the bottom of the entire thing. 18 inches or more covering the ground around the outer perimeter. You can get away with less if you bury the apron a bit.

Bird netting is not secure. Period. I thought it would work. It doesn’t. Chicken wire is the minimum you want for run walls and roof.

Any gaps in perimeter fencing from the ground up to a foot or two needs to be under an inch. 1/2in hardware cloth is your friend.

Invest is a good staple gun and 9/16s staples( a LOT of them) or the staple type nails. You’d be surprised what critters can work loose if they work on it long enough.

And ALWAYS build bigger than your current needs. There’s not such thing as too much room and not enough room can kill.

I don’t know how to tag people but 3KillerBs has the coop building game down.
@3KillerBs

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC.

I've got to get ready for work, but here's the basic info:

The Usual Guidelines

For each adult, standard-sized hen you need:

• 4 square feet in the coop (.37 square meters)
• 10 square feet in the run (.93 square meters),
• 1 linear foot of roost (.3 meters),
• 1/4 of a nest box,
• And 1 square foot (.09 square meters) of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation, preferably located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on the roost.

20 hens

• 80 square feet in the coop. 8'x10' is the most practical because 7'x12' or 6'x14' require a lot of weird cuts.
• 20 feet of roost
• 200 square feet in the run. 10'x20', 12'x16' or 8'x25' as suits the land available.
• 20 square feet of ventilation.
• 5 nest boxes.

I wish I'd have subdivided my big coop so that I could separate flocks as it was built instead of trying to retrofit it. I seriously underestimated the work involved.

I love the huge space, but it's hard to manage different age groups, two roosters, etc.

Some links to inspire you:

Large Coops

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/alaskan-woods-coop.75752/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/my-coop.76267/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/post-and-beam-styled-coop-run.76181/reviews
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/le-palais-de-poulet-the-chicken-palace.67196/
https://countryliving.blog/2021/06/15/my-coop/

 

[DobieLover]

So we are designing our coop.
Back story:
We got 6 BO "hens" in Mar. starting our chicken journey. Couple weeks later grabbed a couple Cochin hens.
We now currently have 22 chickens, 2 Turkeys, 4 ducks & 2 rabbits. lol (Also 3 of our BO hens turned out to be roosters.)

Built a chicken tractor because plan was to free range them. Well advice from locals say not to, because of predators. So we hope to get the moveable fencing to free range them that way.
The chicken tractor is completed; hardware cloth & all. But it was not built for this many chickens nor did we add a roost or nesting boxes. ::
We were going to redesign the tractor to be the coop; expanding it but were gifted a tilt trailer & 20+ pallets. So now the plan is to get as many free pallets as we can & build it from there keeping the tractor for future meat chickens, new additions & what not. Mainly because this needs to be as inexpensive as possible due to other reasons.

We have also finished the permanent fencing area so the coop will butt up to that making it easy for them to come & go.
With all that stated now:

• What is the absolute musts we need to incorporate?

• The "I wish I had known about this before I built mine" ideas/advice?

I have a general idea of what I would like. I know we need roosts, & nesting boxes.
Ideally I would like to have a small area to keep their feed secure, that way it's all in one area instead of having to transport it from the garage mainly during weather events. I also would like to put linoleum or some flooring of the like in it so as to make it easier to clean. (Hoping to do the deep litter method.)

Advice welcome & encouraged!! lololol
We also live in East TN; where the summers get very hot (high 90 temps) but winters can be down in the teens to single digits. We also get high wind.

I can try to post pics of the design we draw up for better advice & the chicken tractor at a later date.

The basics are providing 3.5 to 4 square feet of floor space per bird, 12" of roost length per bird one nest box per 4-5 hens that are positioned lower than the roosts, and as close to 1 square foot of permanently open ventilation per bird as you can manage. The easiest way to do that is to install ventilation between the rafters and pair of that with gable and/or ridge vents. Lots of windows that are backed with 1/2" hardware cloth are advantageous for adding additional ventilation during hot summer months.

The one thing that you should know before starting your build: do yourself a huge favor and make a walk-in style coop.

It is also highly recommended that you still build a predator proof run securely attached to the coop. But with your tight budget you won't be able to put a solid roof over it. So you're going to be forced to keep your food and water in the coop. So you're going to want to make the coop a bit larger than the minimums so that there is space to put the feeders in the water without the birds crashing into them when they come off the roosts.

I assume when you write about a mobile fence you are talking about electrified poultry netting. Choose a charger that is designed to handle deterring large predators. I run 10,000 volts through my fence and it keeps the local black bear way. And all other manner of ground predators.

It would help greatly if you could post pictures of this tilt trailer. I assume you want to use that as the coop base. Is it a single axle towable trailer? If so, you're going to need to support it so it's not going to tilt when you step onto it.

 

[BlessedChaosHomestead]

The basics are providing 3.5 to 4 square feet of floor space per bird, 12" of roost length per bird one nest box per 4-5 hens that are positioned lower than the roosts, and as close to 1 square foot of permanently open ventilation per bird as you can manage. The easiest way to do that is to install ventilation between the rafters and pair of that with gable and/or ridge vents. Lots of windows that are backed with 1/2" hardware cloth are advantageous for adding additional ventilation during hot summer months.

The one thing that you should know before starting your build: do yourself a huge favor and make a walk-in style coop.

It is also highly recommended that you still build a predator proof run securely attached to the coop. But with your tight budget you won't be able to put a solid roof over it. So you're going to be forced to keep your food and water in the coop. So you're going to want to make the coop a bit larger than the minimums so that there is space to put the feeders in the water without the birds crashing into them when they come off the roosts.

I assume when you write about a mobile fence you are talking about electrified poultry netting. Choose a charger that is designed to handle deterring large predators. I run 10,000 volts through my fence and it keeps the local black bear way. And all other manner of ground predators.

It would help greatly if you could post pictures of this tilt trailer. I assume you want to use that as the coop base. Is it a single axle towable trailer? If so, you're going to need to support it so it's not going to tilt when you step onto it.

Thanks for the info, can respond more later just hitting the quick point.

The trailer is so we can haul supplies!! Like more pallets because we will need more. Lol we didn’t have anything to haul them with before.

 

[Chikwhisperer]

I’m in central Alabama so our climate and I’m sure a lot of predators are similar.

The absolute musts are security and ventilation.

What direction the permanent coop faces will help with the construction. My coop is 16ft long and 4 feet wide. I have two doors on the south facing 16ft wall. Each opening is 4 feet wide and one has a door that stays open all summer and then mostly shit in winter.

With our climate, you can go for more of an open design. Or at least a LOT of ventilation. They need a big enough shaded area to get out of the sun aside from the coop. And shading the area around the door(s) would be a good idea to help the coop stay tolerable.

I built mine on a budget so I repurposed some old fencing to cover from ground to about 3 feet and then covered it with chicken wire extending up to the roof of the run. Unless you could seal the pallets, I wouldn’t depend on just those for the coop. The gaps can make it drafty. You need the coop to breath but a constant heavy flow of air can cause problems especially in the winter.


As far as security, you want a hardware cloth apron around the bottom of the entire thing. 18 inches or more covering the ground around the outer perimeter. You can get away with less if you bury the apron a bit.

Bird netting is not secure. Period. I thought it would work. It doesn’t. Chicken wire is the minimum you want for run walls and roof.

Any gaps in perimeter fencing from the ground up to a foot or two needs to be under an inch. 1/2in hardware cloth is your friend.

Invest is a good staple gun and 9/16s staples( a LOT of them) or the staple type nails. You’d be surprised what critters can work loose if they work on it long enough.

And ALWAYS build bigger than your current needs. There’s not such thing as too much room and not enough room can kill.

I don’t know how to tag people but 3KillerBs has the coop building game down.
@3KillerBs

We got 6 just before Covid lock dn so things were scarce @ Rural King got a bunny hutch (2)left. Of the 6 also frm there 5 were Roosters we are allowed 4HENS! 2 were Silkies so cute had to go. They were already grown nice birds by the time could see were males gave to a place they git $60. 4 ea. gone before noon! RK was good & replaced 3 we had 1 so legal 4. Lesson learned! We then built a coop/run in a completely enclosed space with cloth wire 2’ under grnd around. It faces So sm isle along another lg shed & run facing E. Next to wht vynal fencing and the otherside faces another sm shed to W. w/door, & remaining side to No. facing yard etc. the height is 12’ and about same enclosed sq. While chicks grew in bunny h it was constructed. The box 4 perch is about 4’ across guessing & 4-5’ high cut an opening to No side & attached Bunny H in cutout. So they have 2boxes up & dn in hutch and a perch in other box; 1 2X4 across & 1slightly lower a crack between (they go on higher & rest btms on lower.) Roomy airy they snuggle towards So wall. We use sm flake shavings in & run. Under run area we got sq nice sized thick pads prob 12X12? (Like playground pads for kids I guess or patios) We cover those with thick sm shavings I recently added patio edgers around sides to deter digging. We also used the 2 big panels taken off rear of Bunny H and turned upright and can close up screened doors for colder weather, so a large front W. facing opening/door & a sm. So. side door. The lot next door prob. also 1/2 ac. was wooded pre us 2005 but now building a house on it we’ll see how that works! That shaded nice but they cleared it all! So now going to put the plexiglass roofing sheets(? drk ones we used for roof around top to mdl. So & West sides 1/2 way dn to deter sun. With all the nasties coming can’t let them out to graze So glad it’s roomy.

 

[Chikwhisperer]

Well guess I put reply below post (that’s what came up not this spot weird me that’s me right above

 

[BlessedChaosHomestead]

Ok so it doesn’t look like I can edit my OP to add pics. But here is the area marked out so far. (The tractor is to the right of it.)

It’s 8x14 feet.
The gate fence post will be base of one wall. You can see the right side markers. The front left is right out of camera view.

We were discussing having it raised off the 2-3ft off ground that way we can hardware cloth that & it’s a place for them to use as shade or when it’s raining.

 

[My Very First 6 Chickens]

So we are designing our coop.
Back story:
We got 6 BO "hens" in Mar. starting our chicken journey. Couple weeks later grabbed a couple Cochin hens.
We now currently have 22 chickens, 2 Turkeys, 4 ducks & 2 rabbits. lol (Also 3 of our BO hens turned out to be roosters.)

Built a chicken tractor because plan was to free range them. Well advice from locals say not to, because of predators. So we hope to get the moveable fencing to free range them that way.
The chicken tractor is completed; hardware cloth & all. But it was not built for this many chickens nor did we add a roost or nesting boxes. ::
We were going to redesign the tractor to be the coop; expanding it but were gifted a tilt trailer & 20+ pallets. So now the plan is to get as many free pallets as we can & build it from there keeping the tractor for future meat chickens, new additions & what not. Mainly because this needs to be as inexpensive as possible due to other reasons.

We have also finished the permanent fencing area so the coop will butt up to that making it easy for them to come & go.
With all that stated now:

• What is the absolute musts we need to incorporate?

• The "I wish I had known about this before I built mine" ideas/advice?

I have a general idea of what I would like. I know we need roosts, & nesting boxes.
Ideally I would like to have a small area to keep their feed secure, that way it's all in one area instead of having to transport it from the garage mainly during weather events. I also would like to put linoleum or some flooring of the like in it so as to make it easier to clean. (Hoping to do the deep litter method.)

Advice welcome & encouraged!! lololol
We also live in East TN; where the summers get very hot (high 90 temps) but winters can be down in the teens to single digits. We also get high wind.

I can try to post pics of the design we draw up for better advice & the chicken tractor at a later

Hello, My opinion is, if you do nothing else, really nail the ventilation aspect of your coop and go all out on predator protection. If you can keep them safe and healthy and provide a good commercial feed and plenty of fresh water, these chickens do aright! Good luck! My favorite part of my coop is being able to walk into the run. If i can reach it, its getting cleaned,

 

[BlessedChaosHomestead]

Thanks for the advice.
We had a floor laid from pallets but then God blessed us with a location somewhat near us that had TONS of pallets & not just typical pallets but thick hardwood-heavy pallets. So hauled 3 loads of misc pallets home.
Re-did the floor & I painted it Thurs. morning. An outdoor sealant type paint.
We all got like a cold so project was on hold this weekend. But hopefully Mon or Tues we will start building again.
Turkey house has been built on the back side though.