First coop

[BlackRose89]

Ok, I'm looking into possibly building my first coop, but honestly prices at rural king and TSC seem like it would be cheaper to just buy one... I'm gonna have an enclosed run, but admittedly a small one bc my plan is to free range them during the day and the enclosed run will only be in case I'm not home (I'm a stay at home mom so that's a rarity) and for the future contingency that someday my significant other and I will get married and go on a honeymoon or at least a vacation and someone else will have to care for them for a few days. I plan to have maybe 5 hens and a rooster, and I'm unsure on sizes for the coop/run to accommodate them. If u can excuse my extremely poor handwriting and very rough sketchs I'll include some pictures of ideas I'm spitballing around. All feedback is welcome.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You might read through this thread to see what some of us think about most of those purchased coops. There are a few good ones, but most fall into the category of the one we reviewed. You are practically always better off building a coop. If you have a specific one you want us to look at, we’ll tell you what we think, either a purchased one or one.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/852529/money-poorly-spent

If you follow the link in my signature, you’ll see how I feel about space requirements. I don’t give cookbook numbers. There are way too many variables in our conditions and goals for any one magic number to work for us all.

An idea of your location would help too, so we can see what kind of weather you might have.

 

[BlackRose89]

 

[NinjaRooster]

Some rough sketches would be great!

Any of the commercially available coops I've seen have been really expensive. But then again, I use mainly reclaimed/pallet wood.












ok, im really slow.

 

[BlackRose89]

 

[BlackRose89]

Again, poor rough sketches. I'm in mid eastern Indiana, right now we have a foot of snow and summers it's been known to top 100. Planning to get one hen each of ameraucana, Dominique, buff orp, and brahma, then a brahma rooster.

 

[BlackRose89]

Ridgerunner, I'm on iPhone so I don't see your signature, I'm sorry. Typically I prefer building my own things so they can be exactly what I want, but I've never had chickens before and I looked at what I was coming up with and realized it was going to be expensive. Since we are still snowbound I'm obviously not getting chicks anytime soon, so for now I'm 100% spitballing ideas and open to any and all info.

 

[Ridgerunner]

4x4 is real tight for 5 hens and a rooster. If you commit to never leaving them locked in there during their waking hours (they get up with the sun) when you have the flu or Saturday mornings after a late Friday night you might get away with it. When you do go on vacation, can you find someone that will be able to do that? Do you ever have weather when they can’t go outside? You are not giving yourself any flexibility with one that size.

Try laying out the inside. How would you set it up so they can roost without pooping in the food and water, if you plan on feed and water inside?

Why do you want the rooster? So you can hatch chicks? Where would they fit in that coop?

You have way too many nests. A general rule of thumb is one nest for every four hens with a flock your size. Two nests would be plenty.

You really want a run talk enough that you can walk in it without bumping your head.

How would you clean that coop out? You need to be able to access everywhere inside, maybe to fix something, to gather an egg if they don’t lay in a nest, to retrieve an injured chicken that may not want to be caught, something will come up.

It’s elevated which is not a bad idea. If you fence around the coop and include that in the run, that gives them a place other than in the coop to get out of the weather. Shade in the summer is really important. When you elevate it, you need to be able to access it under there so make it high enough you can see under there and retrieve an egg or injured chicken if you need to.

You’ll probably get feedback on the chicken wire. Occasionally you’ll see threads where a dog or raccoon tore chicken wire and killed the chickens inside. Chicken wire will keep chickens in, but it really won’t keep a determined big predator out. A lot of people will tell you that you have to use hardware cloth for a run, but I’m not one of those. It’s pretty expensive. I used 2” x 4” welded wire for my run. That keeps big predators out. I haven’t had this problem, but some people have had a raccoon reach through openings smaller than that and pull a chicken through in pieces to eat it. If you line the bottom inside of your run with chicken wire, just the bottom 18” or so, you can stop that. That combo will be a lot less expensive than hardware cloth.

That’s just a quick look. Hope you get some good out of this. Good luck!

 

[BlackRose89]

Bc I was told nesting boxes should be about 1'x1' I was toying with the idea of a 4'x4' cube, tho the height would be taller to accommodate the roof pitch. During daylight hours they'd (hopefully if they stay in the yard,lol) be free to roam our nearly 2 acres and we are surrounded by farm fields. My idea for the run was roughly 4' wide, maybe 10' long, and tapering down to 3' tall, but bc I haven't nailed down all my measurements I'm not sure how tall it would be at the tallest part.

 

[BlackRose89]

Ridgerunner- my plan for the run was to be detachable and moveable, so I could have 2 opening doors, one on each side of the coop, so if I needed to mow or if I needed to clean it I could just detach it from the coop and move it off or to the other side, the PVC pipe frame was to keep it light enough to make that possible. As far as cleaning the inside of the coop, I thought the front access would be like a door within a door. A smaller door just to change the food/water, and the bigger door would pretty much be the whole wall swinging away so I could get in to clean easier. As far as the chicken wire vs predators go, since I dont plan for them to be able to access the run at night I'm not overly worried about it, and during the day my dogs keep everything scared off, and they won't mess with other animals I claim as mine. The rooster was more for protection than breeding, I am only wanting eggs, fertilizer, and big control, but I saw something somewhere about how roosters watch for hawks etc and alert the hens. Outside that I'm not real interested in the rooster. Last concern u mentioned was shade... The pic I'm including this time is from a map app, the empty white block is where I put our garden and the red box was where I was thinking of putting the coop, the blue boxes off of it being where the run could sit. I don't think shade will be a problem in our yard.