Electronic coop build in Texas

[chickenturd]

Howdy all, We love our birds so much and we figure they deserve a new chicken coop! With more planning this time, I'm actually going to integrate all sorts of technologies into this coop build.

The frame:
It's a 3x3 frame with the floor elevated off the ground. The roof is just a slant from the front to the back and over hangs a bit. I'm not sure what I'm going to mount on for the actual roof yet... maybe metal, maybe painted ply-wood, or maybe that plastic roofing stuff at the box-stores? The main this is, I'm going to mount a solar panel to it.

The door:
There are two aluminum channels for a piece of sheet metal to slide up and down. The door will be raised and lowered by wire, a pulley, and a car automatic/power antenna motor. It will be opened in the morning and closed just after sunset by a micro-controller. I will post more details on this later so that you can take my code and replicate it easily.

Heating/cooling:
I've got a 12v heater and I might program the micro-controller to turn it on for a little while if it gets cold inside the coop. For cooling, I might hook up a fan to turn on at night if it's one of those ridiculously hot nights.

Water catchment:
I might install a small gutter so my girls can drink pure rain water... any thoughts on this?

Internals/other:
One nest box because our 3 birds just love to share a nest. Any thoughts on nest box design? I've heard if you make it really really small, they never poop in there. I'm going to mount some large branches in the inside for them to perch on. One complete side is going to be a hinged door so that we can have easy access to clean the whole thing. Any thoughts on painting the inside to make poop-washing easier? I figure we will use hay or something to dry the poop so we don't have to clean it out often.

All comments welcome!

Frame

Floor installed

Construction delayed!

 

[TransitionArizona]

I am interested to hear your ideas for the automatic door. I rigged up an old recycled garage door opener to an X10 home automation controller for my automatic door. Works pretty well. No predator has any chance of prying it open. I put an x10 chime module nearby, so the birds hear a pleasant jingle noise when the door is opening or closing.

Regarding the rain water catchment, I am working on a system now which catches rainwater from the coop roof gutter, then will go to a "first flush device". You can make one of these from PVC and a kids ball for a float, or buy them ready to go. The first flush device allows the initial rainwater to wash the roof off (debris, dust etc), before passing that water on to the system. Downstream, you can then fill a tank with very clean rain water. My design then goes to a standard 5 gallon bucket. Inside the bucket is a swamp cooler/evaporative cooler float valve. This valve keeps the 5 gallon bucket always full. Then in the bottom of the bucket are three poultry feeder valves. Using these, the chickens get pure fresh water that is always clean. Took them a few days to figure out how to operate the valves, but eventually they figured it out, with a little coaxing from me.

I am curious about your heating arrangement. DO you have a large battery bank to store your 12v? Seems to me on a cold night, any sort of 12 heater will deplete its power source pretty quickly. If this system is totally solar, with no AC power, I would think you might need a pretty large battery bank and a hundred watts of solar power during the day to keep it charged. Then again, I don't know what part of the country you are in, how warm you intend to try to make the coop etc.

One thing you might consider is a Passive solar design whereby you make the south side of the coop almost entirely with dual paned glass, like an old window etc. Then orient the coop with the glass side south. You can build a window overhang of the correct angle and length to shade the south-facing window. You can google for these designs and calculate for your location. The neat thing is that during winter, your coop can get full passive solar heating. Then during summer, because the sun is higher in the sky, with the correct overhang, the heat of day is shaded out of the coop to keep it cooler. Since you will be putting a solar panel on the roof, I am guessing you will be orienting the coop to the south anyway. So adding a window and an overhang can give you a lot of passive heating and cooling.

Sounds like fun!

 

[Judy]

Um, that might be a little small for 3 hens, especially if they ever stay in due to weather. Mine will go in the coop on hot days for the breeze and shade, but it won't be cool in that small a coop. If yours won't walk on snow, as many won't, there are those days, too, though I imagine that's unusual for you. Actually in a hot climate I feel a 3 sided coop is best, for the breeze. Chickens tolerate cold much better than heat. If I had that coop I would leave one side open at attach a predator proof run, or make at least one side of hardware cloth.

I've never heard they won't poop in a small nest, and if they like to share a nest, it needs to be big enough for that. 3 chickens don't need more than one nest anyway. I'd probably make it about 18" wide so they can all squeeze in if they really want to, and 2 can be comfortable. They generally won't sleep in a nest that is lower than the roost, but it's hard to make much difference in their heights in a small coop. It's also hard to give adequate cold weather ventilation in a small coop that doesn't create a draft on them at night.

Frankly, if you're going to put that kind of time and resources into a coop, I'd make a larger one, even a walk in. I like the gutter for drinking water, a lot. Not sure what a solar panel would be for, heat really isn't necessary, but admittedly, electricity is always convenient. Again, I'd put some of those resources into more space for them. 4 sq ft per chicken in the coop and 10 sq ft in the run is often given as a standard on here, but it is really a bare minimum to prevent pecking and worse. If the run is huge or if they free range, though, it should not be too little space; it will just be difficult to keep it cool in summer and draft free but ventilated in winter.

For bedding, probably the most convenient is pine shavings, as they control odor well and are easy to handle. People use all sorts of stuff, though, including hay. I have both here; mostly I use they hay in nest boxes and pine shavings on the floor, but there's always some hay on the floor too. Sometimes other stuff is available, ground corn cobs, rice hulls, whatever -- if it is dry and not hard to walk on, it will probably work. Probably the easiest to keep clean and dry is sand.

It's always easier to clean wood walls and floors if they are painted, preferably not with flat paint. Same for the floor, though even more convenient is a linoleum type floor which extends a few inches up the walls. Don't use those 12" linoleum tiles, though. Junk gets in the cracks and water seeps through to the floor below.

I'm just repeating what I've read on here for a lot of this. I have an 11x17 coop with two sides largely hardware cloth for breeze; I cover some of it in winter with rugs or plastic but it is quite breezy in there all year. I also run a box fan all summer. Mine use it for shade on hot days. (I have had more chickens in there than I do at present; right now there are 12 mature birds; we process extra roos.) My floor is dirt and I wouldn't want any other kind.

You might want to look this over:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=163417&p=1

Good luck.

 

[Kansaseq]

Sounds like it's going to be a really nice coop! I have to agree with ddawn, though; skip the heat and at least double or even triple the size. You just can't make a coop too big, and it will be easier to keep cool in summer, and well ventilated, yet warm in winter. Good luck and keep posting pics of your progress. We LOVE pictures

 

[chickenturd]

Sorry that it has taken me so long. But I was lucky enough to get some work done recently!


Slides for sheet metal door:

back and sides are done:

Electric door from the inside of the coop:

Second pic of sliding door from inside:

The sheet metal door is 12 inches wide and will open up about 12-14 inches so I think that will be plenty of room for the chickens to get in and out of the coop.
I forgot to take pics of the tin-metal roof, sorry!


Still left to do:

- Finish wood on front and secure sliding door so no animals can open it from the outside.
- Install a perch on the inside - looking for a good tree branch (any recommendations on diameter for regular size red-star chickens?)
- paint inside floor to keep from rotting and make for easy poop cleanup
- program microcontroller to automatically open/close door based on light sensor (will close 15 minutes after sunset to give the girls plenty of time)
- maybe install some vents?


CONCERN!!
I just read this from another thread:

Just so you are aware ceder oil is harmful to chickens. It can give them respiratory infections. Just a heads up.

Is it a problem that my new (and old) coops were built with cedar? The cedar is aged and weathered, though.​

 

[elmo]

As long as there is no strong cedar odor anymore, using cedar should be fine.

You're putting a lot of effort and expense into your coop. I just wonder about some very basic things you may not be giving enough consideration to. It's very small. Once you go below 4 square feet per bird inside a coop, you're getting into trouble territory. And you'll be taking up some of the floor space with a nestbox?

Coops need to have way more ventilation than you expect, even for winter, and for summer...I'm in Texas, too. Chickens can die from heat in our summers, especially in small, conventional closed coops that don't have way, way, way more ventilation than you're planning. Metal roofs tend to let heat from the sun radiate right into the inside of the coop. Please do be sure to put your coop in the deepest darkest shade in the summer, or else you might get roasted chickens. Sorry, but a little fan isn't going to do the trick, especially since the dust from chickens will clog and burn the motor out on most nonagricultural models very quickly unless you are obsessive about dusting out the fan vents. Aim for at least 1 square feet of vent per bird, at the tops of walls, for winter. Double that (at least) for summer. And did I mention shade? Find as much as you have, and use it. It won't be enough, and you'll be back here in June looking at threads about how to cool down your chickens (there are plenty of additional things you can do).

With a metal roof, it's going to be pretty dark in there. There are no windows, right? Chickens usually don't like going inside places that are completely dark.

I would not worry about heat for standard chickens in Texas, even up in the Panhandle! As long as standard chickens have a dry, adequately ventilated but draft free place to roost, they can handle any cold weather that Texas can throw at them without even ruffling their feathers.

 

[chickenturd]

Elmo, are you taking with regards to keeping the chickens locked in the coop? Basically my goal with the coop is to keep the birds out of it for a long as they want. As it stands now, our chickens only spend about 10 to 15 minutes per day in the coop, just enough time to lay an egg and then run back out side to eat more bugs. The current coop is the same size (so I could reuse the wood). It will definitely be in the shade though, when I remove the old one. Our girls are sleeping in the travel dog kettle during the current construction. Im not going to do a heater or fan anymore.

 

[elmo]

Quote:
Your chickens will sleep in the coop all night, right? They'll poop all night, and without sufficient ventilation from all their respiration and pooping the air quality won't be very good in there by morning. I guess they free range, which is good, but do they have someplace to get out of the rain, other than their coop?

We just had over a week of below freezing weather here in North Texas, and let me tell you it was very useful to have a coop large enough so that the chickens could stay inside all day if they wished to (they did!).

What if a hawk decides to hang out around your yard for a week or two? With a tiny coop and no run, have you thought about how you'd handle a situation like that?

 

[chickenturd]

thanks for all the observations. I'll be adding sufficient ventilation to my todo list. They do run to the coop or under our garden (raised on blocks) when a hawk is around. The area the old coop is in keeps supprisely cool in the summer heat. This coop will have a large sheltered run built for it when we move this summer, but I will probably end up building a new coop too because we want to expand our flock. It is 9 square feet though. I want to build the secure run because we will move out of the city and there may be more predators to watch out for. We'll still let them out of the run often though.

 

[chickenturd]

Got the door installed, finished most of the wood, and painted the inside floor twice.