Enclosed perch inside coop

[texas hiker]

In the spring of 2012 my wife and I built a 8 foot X 6 foot coop. Half of the coop, 4 x 6 is for the perch.

Currently we have 13 hens, who use about 1/2 the perch space. Picture of the inside of the coop and perch. The coop is on legs 36 inches off the ground, the top part is enclosed in plywood.

The other half of the coop has laying boxes, waterer and feeder.






This summer my wife and I are looking at increasing the flock size to around 25 hens and building a larger chicken coop around the original coop.

It would be a box inside of a box. The chickens would be inside the perch area only for the night. The larger coop would be 14 feet x 18 feet.

The attached yard is going to be 25 feet x 50 feet + free range.

The coop I want to build would have hardware cloth around the top for ventilation.

The question is, how much room do the chickens need on the perch?

We live in a rural area, the original coop was designed to be closed with a trap door at night to keep any predators out.

Do I need to move the laying boxes outside the original coop and add more perch space?

 

[Judy]

Since they only use half the roost, you might be able to get away with the same roost. However, mine spread out on the roost in hot weather and use a lot more than the 6"-9" each they use in cold weather. (I have extra roost simply because there used to be a bunch more chickens.)

Have you considered adding onto your coop rather than building around it? It would take less materials for the same increase in space. If you didn't want the hassle of removing an entire wall, you could even cut a good sized hole in one wall so ventilation and birds could pass readily, then add on to that wall.

 

[texas hiker]

Have you considered adding onto your coop rather than building around it? It would take less materials for the same increase in space. If you didn't want the hassle of removing an entire wall, you could even cut a good sized hole in one wall so ventilation and birds could pass readily, then add on to that wall.

I want them to have room during wet / cold weather. Somewhere they can get out of the rain and space not be an issue.

Directly under the coop during bad weather gets rather cramped.