Discouraged, lost and confused.

[Happy Chooks]

Quote:
Well said.

I understand your frustration, I'm there too. I'm building our coop right now (with direction from the hubby) and I am convinced I'd win the worlds slowest builder award. But someday, it will be finished - and so will yours. You're doing fine.

Here's where I'm at.

 

[laturcotte1]

Your coop is great. Insulate or not, do wht you can afford. You will have hay and shaving and warm bodies in there they will stay warm. We live in Western Ma where it gets pretty cold and our barred rocks do just fine. We have wooden floors on all poultry barns including geese and boy can they get the floors wet. If you have to replace a board or two just replace when the time comes. Don't fret about it you'll take all the fun out of it. You're doing great. As far as the run we have plenty of foxes, the chickens go in for the night but in the summer the doors do not get closed. We have dog kennels surrounding the coop but we lined the entire bottom of the kennels with chicken wire also. We bent the wire out over the ground on the outside and threw heavy rocks on top. If they dig under the rocks they will fall in the hole and prevent them from digging further. Believe it or not we ended up having to enclose the entire run (over the chain link fencing) with chicken wire to prevent the squirrels from getting in! Man they not only eat all their food they scare the hell out of the chickens especically when they get into the eves and build their nests. Good luck and enjoy.

 

[bdog]

I am just finishing an 8x8 and I would say you could spray your wood with a wood presever!

You can use a garden sprayer and spray under the bottom if you could jack it up on one side about 18". The wood presever should add be fine and if you elevate it so you can spray every couple of years!

I am spraying my whole coop with Thompsons water seal inside and outside and then I am going to paint it

I live in Mississippi and we just raise building up a little to get air flow underneath and that should keep it dry, but you probably have snow and I don't know about that.

I did insulate with house insulation with R19. It helps keep it cool in summer and warm in winter. It is an extra expense as you have to put plywood on the inside walls to keep the chickens from peckinfg the paper backing.

I modified my coop with laying boxes through the walls with lids on the out side. I can access the nest without going inside, and I did the same with a homemade feeder. I can load it from the outside.

My best,

Jimmy

 

[wsdareme]

Quote:
First, let me say that your coop is built a heckuva lot better than most coops you'll see! You have done a GREAT job! The plywood floor is just fine -- I suggest putting cheap vinyl flooring over it to make it easier to clean (Home Depot). Put the windows where they're CONVENIENT for your coop design, and avoid the side that most of your winter weather comes from only if absolutely necessary. I live just south of you in Yelm, WA. We are NOT insulating our coop. I bought 2 ThermoCubes (they're the temperature-controlled plug-ins you can plug your heat lamp and water heater into). One runs a box fan (hung in a window) and turns it on at 85 degrees. The other will run my heat lamp and water heater and will come on at 35 degrees. As long as you don't have a really drafty coop, your chickens will be just fine! You can just lay hardware cloth flat on the ground around the edge of your run, cover it with a little dirt or beauty bark, and it will stop anything from digging under your fencing. Also, make sure that you use wire with 1" holes or less to keep critters from reaching in and grabbing your chickens (raccoons and hawks are good at that). Building a coop shouldn't be as difficult as people are trying to make you believe. Oh, in a perfect chicken world, I'm sure that we would have fancy coops that rival our homes in construction quality. But let's be realistic -- most of us can't afford to put that kind of money in our setups. We used a TON of recycled lumber, roofing, windows, etc. to build ours. And, you know what? The Girls LOVE it! If you'd like to see what we did, where we found different items, and how it turned out, please take a look our Coop Building Experience page at https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=50766-the-chicken-experience

 

[gryeyes]

Wow, I wish MY first (and second) coops started out looking as well-planned and executed as yours! First, chickens don't care all that much about how things look or how expensively we build their homes. Second, everything can be fixed if there really is a problem with it. I'm not saying you should slap together some crap, but I can tell you wouldn't do that anyway. You're over-thinking it and scaring yourself with "it's not perfects."

I applaud you for all the work you've already done, the research and planning and concern for "doing it right." Ventilation is important; easily solved with the judicious use of a jig saw and hardware cloth! Or those eave vent thingies, really cheap at Lowe's.

I won't comment on insulation, as winters here are mild except for maybe 1 week of low 20s, which scare the heck out of the people who live around here, but the chickens just cuddle closer and sit on their feet. They have built in insulation on their bodies.

Here's are three photos of my first coop, in which a few chickens were quite happy. It's still in use as a broody & chick sanctuary, but the rest of the year the girls lay eggs in it daily (they sleep in a different coop nowadays), and the youngsters use it to play in!

Under construction:

Completed:

In use:

Now, come on, aren't you doing BOATLOADS better than that????

 

[BlueRoseMama]

You can also resolve the digging under the run issue by laying down chicken wire on the ground and putting shavings or hay over the top of the wire. You don't have to dig it into the ground... just lay it down, and turn it up at the edges to go about 2 ft up the walls of the run. Then secure (I recomend zip ties. They don't look as good as the small metal clamps... but they sure are faster!) the chicken wire on the ground to the sides of the run and you are done! Chickens are protected and no digging required.

I think your coop looks awesome BTW.

Climate is everything. Find someone who is close to you to let you know where to put stuff.

 

[rrgrassi]

Nice coop so far...Was your floor ply wood rated for exterior use? Plywood uses A through D grading, D being a lesser quality due to imperfections knot holes, etc. I used plywood in my attic that was graded as CDX. The X meaning glue suitable for exterior use. The D side faced the rafters and the C side I walk on.

My prebuilt ten year old storage shed has 3/4 in CDX for it's flooring. It has not rotted out yet.

 

[sprawli]

It looks awesome! Everyone here is right! Do what you want! You can modify later if you need too...

 

[Keara]

I live in Vermont and have keep chickens for 5 yrs. Never had an insulated coop! The Birds need to get out of the wind and the wet, have access to food and fresh water and really that is about it. Don't stress it. As for the coyoties and the burried fence, if the birds are locked in the coop at night no worries.

 

[patandchickens]

I was elsewhere yesterday, catching up -- not much to add to what's already been said but since my name was brought up I will post anyway

By all means do an apron rather than burying wire; just as effective if done right, and SO much easier.

As for the floor, what exactly *did* you use? If you used MDF or something that was not actually plywood, I would indeed suggest replacing it as it will not last long at *all* in your situation. If you merely used interior rather than exterior-grade plywood, or if people are telling you you should have used pressure-treated or marine plywood rather than normal exterior-grade, I would not personally replace the floor til it starts to get soft. You'll have A While before that happens.

Again, for the roofing, what exactly *did* you use? It is hard for me to feature what a fatal mistake that MUST be replaced would consist of -- 1/4" MDF maybe

-- and chances are that whatever you got is probably fine. If you need to tear it off some years donw the road and redo it, that's not that hard, just annoying.

Vancouver isn't that cold, you can skip insulation if you want, but life will be much easier if you DO insulate so if at some point you come across appropriate materials and motivation, it'd still be worthwhile. But you can certainly get by without it. You do not necessarily need a vapor barrier behind the insulation (unlike in a house).

I do think ventilation matters a fair bit, especially in your climate. Humid coop air in winter produces frostbite at fairly mild temperatures (sadly common here in Canada where people tend to want to seal the coop up real tight 'to keep heat in' during wintertime, which *causes* the very frostbite they are trying to *avoid); yet you don't want cold (or worse, cold/rainy or cold/snowy) wind blowing in onto the chickens and bedding. I would suggest that during wintertime you will be best off with ample-sized vent opening(s) high atop the E and/or S walls of the coop, with flaps or whatever that let you close 'em off as needed. Add more ventilation for use the rest of the year -- its location is a lot less critical, just make sure there is *enough* -- and you should be good.

Something to bear in mind when people are all saying different things is that it demonstrates that you can at least frequently, at least minimally, sorta-kinda-mostly GET AWAY WITH doing it all different ways

That does not mean that some ways are not better than others, but you know what, an awful lot of things can be adjusted or modified later on if you need to, or you can figure out workarounds to live with features that cannot be changed. If nothing else, you have flexibility in what kinds of breeds you keep -- if you find that your coop has intractable humidity/cold problems, then you know, don't keep large single-combed breeds, do something like chanteclers or buckeyes or wyandottes

You'll be FINE

Good luck, have fun,

Pat