Designing new coop, need advice

[Ronon]

Hey everyone! My name is Ronon. I'm a teenager. I'm excited to start raising chickens.

My yard is full of grass, but my parents let me give half of the yard to my chickens...about 500 sqft. My Dad is going to help my fence it in and cover it with hardware cloth. We live in Albuquerque, NM and it is a dry climate with summers getting up to the low 100s and winters being in the high 20s at night.

We're going to be getting 6 baby chicks this Monday from Tractor Supply

I want to build my own coop, but the designs I found were too complex so I designed my own on paper. I asked my Dad for help and he helped me design it in a CAD program. I wanted a simple and efficient design that was easier to build. I don't know if this will work, so I'm asking you for advice.

The coop is 5' wide, 5' long, and 5.5' tall.

My Dad sent me these pictures of the design.....

The green things are my Dad's attempt at making chickens. The wide open doors will close and become a wall.


That hole in the floor will have hardware cloth covering it. It's where the chickens will poop when they're asleep and it allows better airflow. My Dad says we could cover it in the winter with straw to help insulate it better. He also said he'd buy me a infrared heater if we need it.


This shows the door to open to get the eggs.


As you can see in this picture, I went for a sort of vertical roosting. I decided to put a divider wall between the chickens roosting and the place where they lay the eggs to give them more privacy.


Top down view of everything.


Is there anything wrong with the hole in the floor?
Is this simple design okay or do I need to start over?

 

[rosemarythyme]

I can't tell from the illustration but the roosts look too close together.

Give your dad these numbers as a suggested minimum.
- 4 sq ft in coop for floor space per bird
- 10 sq ft in run per bird
- 1 sq ft of ventilation in coop per bird in moderate climates, upwards of 2-3 sq ft of ventilation in hotter climates
- Roosts should be 12" from the wall, 14-16" away from the next roost. 12" of roost length per bird

The hole in the floor won't work like you think as you currently have it planned, chicken poop can be much bigger than 1/2". It will get clogged there and you will have to scrape it off daily.

You need a LOT more ventilation. One entire wall with your temperatures. The cold is not an issue but the heat will be.

You don't need a dividing wall but your egg boxes have no lip (a low board in front of the box) to keep eggs from being kicked out.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Here's an entire thread of open-air coop ideas, which should be more suited to your hot, dry climate: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/wanted-open-air-coop-pics.1489579/

 

[Ronon]

This is Dad on Ronon's account...

Thank you, @rosemarythyme. We looked through that thread and found all of the coops to be a bit large. Keeping with the idea of an open coop, I modified Ronon's plan a bit. What are your thoughts with opening up that wall like this?

Also, I added the rough plan for fencing, so you can see how we plan to secure the birds. One thing to note is three sides will be surrounded by 5' tall brick walls with a few feet gap -- not a lot of wind whipping through there.



Each green "bird" is 8"wide X 12"long X 12"high.


With the wall set to not transparent:

 

[Ronon]

Dad again...
One more thing to add -- The winters here can get as low as -6 for a couple of days, but usually swing from the low 20s at night to low 50s during the day. Summers will range from 45 to 95 in a 24 hour period.

Also, we're fans of Chicken City Live: https://www.youtube.com/@ChickenCity/streams

 

[Penpal]

How will you keep the door/roof of the nest boxes open? This is how we had it on our coop and I didn't like it. You could swing the door down, then you wouldn't have to hold it up while collecting eggs.

They don't need a wall for privacy. It just makes the coop cramped. You also only need two nest boxes.

I wouldn't have two roosting bars. They will all want to be on the higher roost because of hierarchy. It might be better to make the coop another 18" wider for a longer roost. If you go with two, make sure the birds on the upper roost aren't pooping on the birds of the lower roost. Or, have one roost where you have it, and the other roost on a different wall.

With using doors for one wall it will be much easier to clean out- great idea. What will you use for litter? I found straw works really well, some people use wood chips. In the winter, the manure will compost with the straw, which will create heat. A fully feathered chicken won't need additional heat.

 

[Ronon]

How will you keep the door/roof of the nest boxes open? This is how we had it on our coop and I didn't like it. You could swing the door down, then you wouldn't have to hold it up while collecting eggs.

Great idea!

They don't need a wall for privacy. It just makes the coop cramped. You also only need two nest boxes.

10-4 on the wall. We included 4 boxes so he could grow his flock up to 10.

I wouldn't have two roosting bars. They will all want to be on the higher roost because of hierarchy. It might be better to make the coop another 18" wider for a longer roost. If you go with two, make sure the birds on the upper roost aren't pooping on the birds of the lower roost. Or, have one roost where you have it, and the other roost on a different wall.

We based the design on Chicken City:


Isn't allowing them to establish the "pecking order" a good thing?

With using doors for one wall it will be much easier to clean out- great idea. What will you use for litter? I found straw works really well, some people use wood chips. In the winter, the manure will compost with the straw, which will create heat. A fully feathered chicken won't need additional heat.

In the second design, we ditched the doors for an open wall for the roost. Was planning to use straw under the roost. Good to know it composts right there in-place.

 

[NagemTX]

Great idea!


10-4 on the wall. We included 4 boxes so he could grow his flock up to 10.


We based the design on Chicken City:
View attachment 3749715

Isn't allowing them to establish the "pecking order" a good thing?


In the second design, we ditched the doors for an open wall for the roost. Was planning to use straw under the roost. Good to know it composts right there in-place.

I have four bars, two lower and two higher. All but 3 or 4 roost on the two higher ones. So you could just have two at the same hight.

 

[NagemTX]

Also, I love chicken city!

 

[rosemarythyme]

We looked through that thread and found all of the coops to be a bit large. Keeping with the idea of an open coop, I modified Ronon's plan a bit. What are your thoughts with opening up that wall like this?

They're large as several of them are designed to be a coop and run combo - so they look unusually big but the "coop" is simply the climate protected roosting area within the run. As long as the run is predator proof a fully enclosed coop is not required in hot or moderate temps. For colder weather, you could weather proof the run to provide more climate protection.

Also, I added the rough plan for fencing, so you can see how we plan to secure the birds. One thing to note is three sides will be surrounded by 5' tall brick walls with a few feet gap -- not a lot of wind whipping through there.

Good to know, that will help with wind and colder temperatures to cut down on the draftiness in the set up. You will want to make sure any additional solid walls (like a wood coop wall) are facing primary wind directions if the brick walls don't already cover that.

Since you mentioned the brick is existing walls, is this strictly your fencing or property line fencing? Just want to make sure you take into account any required setbacks for a coop, as well as the ability to do maintenance on the wall if needed.

Ok, so taking a look at your diagram, here's some changes I'd suggest:

- The area in front of the coop is completely open air, correct? I would push the roosts all the way back so they are fully protected by the roof and side walls. Take the side walls all the way to the ground, or very close to it. Basically make a 3 sided box that protects the roosts.
- Axe the ramp and pop opening at the side, the birds will never need it.
- Axe the wall in front of the nest boxes, and drop them closer to the ground (unless bending over for accessibility is an issue). Nests should be lower than roosts or chickens will be more inclined to sleep in them. Nests can go under the roosts if you put enough overhang on top of them to prevent birds from pooping into them OR can be bumped out so the entrance is under the roo

You said you might possibly have up to 10 birds, and the coop footprint was 5x5? So it'd be more like this (top down, sorry no fancy graphics ha):

Red would be roost placement, with 5' width each roost you'd only need 2 for 10 birds to fit. The front one is set in about 1', the one behind it is set back 1.5' from the first. Roosts should probably be the same height but admittedly mine are laddered so there's pros and cons each way. If roosts are removable (i.e. using joist hangers) that should make it super easy to clean in there.

I'd highly suggest you make the coop tall enough for your convenience, so you don't need to bend over to clean inside. I have a bad back so I always think about that!

Peach is the nest boxes, this will still allow you to open for access in the rear the way you originally planned. Or you could bump out the nests entirely out the back, so chicken access is directly at the back wall but the body of the nest boxes would bump out roughly 1'. Doing it the second way you could reduce the depth of the coop by 1' to compensate, or leave the size as is and push the roosts another foot further back for extra climate protection. I don't show height since this is overhead but assume the nests will be placed fairly low, again, to keep them lower than the roosts.