Favourite thing about your coop?

[harmesonfarm]

Were looking into building our new coop this spring and i'm just wondering what everyone's favourite thing about their coops are?

Right now we have a converted shed that we've built roosts onto and put in nesting boxes with a feeder and waterer...
I would like to make it a bit more sensible and chicken orientated though to give the best house we can to our chickens.

Right now we have 6 older gals that we'll be thinning out perhaps and we have 8 1-month olds that i would love to start incorporating into our flock asap...but we'd really prefer to do that when we've got the newer coop figured out and in motion at least. I've thought about building a small tractor for the young ones for now / a smaller coop that they could stay in until the new one is done...is that a sensible idea? what do you all think and what do you have set up for your young ones with older ones?

Thanks ahead for the input, i'm excited to hear what everyone has to say!

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

My favorite part about the my current (and previous) coop was the size and the fact that it was a walk-in coop -- I enjoy spending time with my birds, so being able to go into the coop and move about accommodates this even in bad weather and I find that being able to move about inside the coop makes performing maintenance (cleaning, adding to the deep litter, etc) much easier than trying to reach into a smaller coop that a person can not actually enter -- besides, being human accessible means it is also of a larger size which is what I prefer for my birds.

The other thing I really like about my current coop that was lacking in my previous coop is that I have poop boards under the roost now. This allows me to make full use of the entire floor space because I have the feed/water hung on the underside of the poop board --- if there was not a board under the roosts the floor space below would not be usable for this.

I just sold my grow-out coop - I had picked up one of those silly little pre-fab units off craigs list to use for a grow out/isolation/hospital unit. It worked out well and was able to be located in such a way that when used as a grow out pen it allowed for the "see but don't touch" phase -- of course, for use as a hospital or isolation unit it was located well away from the main coop. My initial plan was to simply do a small hoop coop for a grow out pen this year, but we are going to be moving this year so instead of proceeding with expanding the flock I'll be closing the flock out entirely.

 

[harmesonfarm]

My favorite part about the my current (and previous) coop was the size and the fact that it was a walk-in coop -- I enjoy spending time with my birds, so being able to go into the coop and move about accommodates this even in bad weather and I find that being able to move about inside the coop makes performing maintenance (cleaning, adding to the deep litter, etc) much easier than trying to reach into a smaller coop that a person can not actually enter -- besides, being human accessible means it is also of a larger size which is what I prefer for my birds.

The other thing I really like about my current coop that was lacking in my previous coop is that I have poop boards under the roost now. This allows me to make full use of the entire floor space because I have the feed/water hung on the underside of the poop board --- if there was not a board under the roosts the floor space below would not be usable for this.

I just sold my grow-out coop - I had picked up one of those silly little pre-fab units off craigs list to use for a grow out/isolation/hospital unit. It worked out well and was able to be located in such a way that when used as a grow out pen it allowed for the "see but don't touch" phase -- of course, for use as a hospital or isolation unit it was located well away from the main coop. My initial plan was to simply do a small hoop coop for a grow out pen this year, but we are going to be moving this year so instead of proceeding with expanding the flock I'll be closing the flock out entirely.

Thanks so much for the response! i definitely love the idea of a walk-in coop for ease of maintenance, and the idea the birds have more space.
Poop boards is an intriguing one, never heard of that! Do you need to clear them daily from build-up? I could see our birds filling it up overnight (haha) at least if it's what i'm envisioning the poop boards to be -- attached under the roost and extended out to catch poop?

Definitely love the idea of having a space for young ones, i'm thinking a kind of tractor for that, and at our next home maybe make a bigger coop that has different areas available for uses, for newbies to grow accustomed and not picked on too rough to the everyday use coop area for the older gals.

Hope the move goes great, sorry to hear about your birds!