Do you intend to keep plastic on it all year? And, do you know if a building like a greenhouse needs to have building permits if it reaches a permit size, since they are made of pipe or whatever? I would not think they would, but it is good to know before hand.
I have no idea about permits ... we are a farm so don't have any city rules to follow. These greenhouses have been on the farm for decades, we just relocated them. They are not connected to a residence. Et cetera. It is probably worth checking what is allowed in a specific location.
I would think any electrical would have to be properly permitted, regardless. But the structure is "temporary" and farm related.
We do leave the plastic on it at all times. We roll up the sides in all but the worst weather for good ventilation.
We have done a couple of cattle panel hoop coops using T-posts instead of a wooden frame and we loved how simple they were to construct. One of them is 25' long.
I got he idea from Blooie here on BYC, who built a fabulous run for her coop this way. It's SO simple!
We attached chicken wire to the cattle panels when the panels were still flat ... 5' wire worked best for us, we just wrapped the excess around the panels and secured it with special wire twist ties we use here on the farm and a twisting tool. That part was a little tedious, but simple enough. Then we assembled the rest.
The door is super clever ... it is "self hinged" ... that part took man hands.
You can use short t-posts, and a post pounder. Just make sure the posts are perfectly placed at the corner of the panel ... and put up one panel at a time. Stringing a line might help keep it all straight.
Here are some photos of the Modular T-Post Hoop Coop construction.
We wanted a spacious cage we could use for short-term housing of specific birds. We affectionately call this coop "The Cull Cage." It would work equally well to house meat birds or a breeding colony. It sits in the regular free-range forage area here. This is where we put birds we don't want to have sleeping with the laying flock or free-ranging with them during the day (like hormonal cockerels, or breeding birds).
My idea was to get the wire "mods" ready to go so that when I had "man hands" around to pound stakes and stuff it would go faster. So I attached the chicken wire to the cattle panels in advance. We used the 1" chicken wire, and if we feel we need more security we could always string some 1/2" hardware cloth around the bottom of the coop. But for our purposes so far, the 1" chicken wire is fine.
It took us a try to figure out the 5' chicken wire works better than the 4'. Cattle Panels are 50" wide, which is just enough over 4' to make stretching the 4' wire to fit a pain. We cut the lengths of wire a little long to wrap it around the ends a foot or so.
There is a tool that make attaching the chicken wire to the cattle panel a bit simpler ... a "wire twister," available online. You also need the wires to go with it. However, a person could just use zip ties, or could hand-thread the wire to "sew" it together.
Those three photos show the wire ties, the twisting tool, and the tool actually twisting the wire (Dad's man hands).
These next two photos show the placement of the T-Posts ... you want the cattle panels snug against the T. You'll close the tiny gap later with more ties.
Here is a photo when we were almost done placing the cattle panels ...
I think it is a good idea to secure each new panel to the previous one as you go.
The next part was putting the door on. We just did one door, at the top end. We used bolt cutters to cut the cattle panel open along one edge so there were "prongs" sticking out, then bent the prongs around a section of cattle panel to act as hinges. We lift the door slightly to clear the ground, and swing it open. The door is quite large, but it is very light, so lifting it with one hand is easy.
The other end was just enclosed with regular wire fencing we had laying around, but you could use 1/2 of a cattle panel for the each end (depending on your door arrangement). We also made sure to wrap the ends with chicken wire.
AND ... this part is SUPER important though I have no photos to show ... we added a little chicken wire "skirt" around the entire coop. This means there is a foot or so of chicken wire on the ground all the way around the perimeter of the coop, and wrapped a bit up the sides. The wire quickly gets buried a bit in the ground, and we made sure to secure it to the side of the coop for good measure. This prevents predators from digging under the sides of the coop. It also prevents the birds inside from digging under ...
For the rest of summer & fall we just used a small tarp over one end of the coop. The coop sits under a huge tree, so this was great for shade and some protection from wind & rain. This way the birds get plenty of fresh air and sunshine and we didn't feel so guilty about keeping them confined. It was just temporary.
When we started getting some serious weather, we wrapped the coop in greenhouse plastic. This stuff is great ... it comes in various widths and lengths. We chose the 20' wide roll, so we'd have a little extra to weight down along the sides. We love the greenhouse plastic because it allows plenty of light into the coop. However, there are also companies that make tarps specifically for this type of structure. The greenhouse plastic is "permanent." It will eventually wear out, but we don't remove it for different seasons.
We just poked the t-posts through the plastic, and this will allow us to roll up the sides on warm days like we do for our main coops. We secured the plastic by stringing twine over the top. We tied the twine to the t-posts. I'm happy to report this has held up beautifully even during some seriously windy weather. I suppose if you were super concerned about rain or snow melt leaking in through the holes we poked through the plastic, then you could patch them with some Gorilla Tape or something.
We didn't put plastic on the North end of the coop. This allows for plenty of ventilation (there is a lot to be said for "open air" coops, and no they aren't "drafty" if only one side is open, and yes they can work in seriously cold areas). The roosts are up at the South end, so the birds can be cozy up there even on the windiest nights. For us, the North end gets the least "bad" weather ... and it is also the downhill side of the coop which works well for any run-off. Everyone has a different set of variables to work with on this.
(two of those roosts are dumb in every way, ignore them ... the double roost at the top is okay)
We put the bedding right on the bare dirt and use the "deep litter" method. We like to use a combination of found stuff (leaves, pine needles) and store-bought shavings.
We've been housing some spare cockerels in this coop for a while, which we processed this week, so had an Open House. This is part of the Free Range Flock taking a tour ...
Here are some photos of the Modular T-Post Hoop Coop construction.
We wanted a spacious cage we could use for short-term housing of specific birds. We affectionately call this coop "The Cull Cage." It would work equally well to house meat birds or a breeding colony. It sits in the regular free-range forage area here. This is where we put birds we don't want to have sleeping with the laying flock or free-ranging with them during the day (like hormonal cockerels, or breeding birds).
My idea was to get the wire "mods" ready to go so that when I had "man hands" around to pound stakes and stuff it would go faster. So I attached the chicken wire to the cattle panels in advance. We used the 1" chicken wire, and if we feel we need more security we could always string some 1/2" hardware cloth around the bottom of the coop. But for our purposes so far, the 1" chicken wire is fine.
It took us a try to figure out the 5' chicken wire works better than the 4'. Cattle Panels are 50" wide, which is just enough over 4' to make stretching the 4' wire to fit a pain. We cut the lengths of wire a little long to wrap it around the ends a foot or so.
There is a tool that make attaching the chicken wire to the cattle panel a bit simpler ... a "wire twister," available online. You also need the wires to go with it. However, a person could just use zip ties, or could hand-thread the wire to "sew" it together.
Those three photos show the wire ties, the twisting tool, and the tool actually twisting the wire (Dad's man hands).
These next two photos show the placement of the T-Posts ... you want the cattle panels snug against the T. You'll close the tiny gap later with more ties.
Here is a photo when we were almost done placing the cattle panels ...
I think it is a good idea to secure each new panel to the previous one as you go.
The next part was putting the door on. We just did one door, at the top end. We used bolt cutters to cut the cattle panel open along one edge so there were "prongs" sticking out, then bent the prongs around a section of cattle panel to act as hinges. We lift the door slightly to clear the ground, and swing it open. The door is quite large, but it is very light, so lifting it with one hand is easy.
The other end was just enclosed with regular wire fencing we had laying around, but you could use 1/2 of a cattle panel for the each end (depending on your door arrangement). We also made sure to wrap the ends with chicken wire.
AND ... this part is SUPER important though I have no photos to show ... we added a little chicken wire "skirt" around the entire coop. This means there is a foot or so of chicken wire on the ground all the way around the perimeter of the coop, and wrapped a bit up the sides. The wire quickly gets buried a bit in the ground, and we made sure to secure it to the side of the coop for good measure. This prevents predators from digging under the sides of the coop. It also prevents the birds inside from digging under ...
For the rest of summer & fall we just used a small tarp over one end of the coop. The coop sits under a huge tree, so this was great for shade and some protection from wind & rain. This way the birds get plenty of fresh air and sunshine and we didn't feel so guilty about keeping them confined. It was just temporary.
When we started getting some serious weather, we wrapped the coop in greenhouse plastic. This stuff is great ... it comes in various widths and lengths. We chose the 20' wide roll, so we'd have a little extra to weight down along the sides. We love the greenhouse plastic because it allows plenty of light into the coop. However, there are also companies that make tarps specifically for this type of structure. The greenhouse plastic is "permanent." It will eventually wear out, but we don't remove it for different seasons.
We just poked the t-posts through the plastic, and this will allow us to roll up the sides on warm days like we do for our main coops. We secured the plastic by stringing twine over the top. We tied the twine to the t-posts. I'm happy to report this has held up beautifully even during some seriously windy weather. I suppose if you were super concerned about rain or snow melt leaking in through the holes we poked through the plastic, then you could patch them with some Gorilla Tape or something.
We didn't put plastic on the North end of the coop. This allows for plenty of ventilation (there is a lot to be said for "open air" coops, and no they aren't "drafty" if only one side is open, and yes they can work in seriously cold areas). The roosts are up at the South end, so the birds can be cozy up there even on the windiest nights. For us, the North end gets the least "bad" weather ... and it is also the downhill side of the coop which works well for any run-off. Everyone has a different set of variables to work with on this.
(two of those roosts are dumb in every way, ignore them ... the double roost at the top is okay)
We put the bedding right on the bare dirt and use the "deep litter" method. We like to use a combination of found stuff (leaves, pine needles) and store-bought shavings.
We've been housing some spare cockerels in this coop for a while, which we processed this week, so had an Open House. This is part of the Free Range Flock taking a tour ...
I leave the front open on my hoop coops, the opposite end of where the roosts are at. They actually seem to like my hoop coops better than the wooden coops when I still used them, especially my ducks. I have clear plastic on most of them. The ducks must like how open they feel and not like they are trapped. I use deep litter as well, and both the chickens and I really like that. It is breaking down so fast, even now in Winter. It seems like every time I add bedding, I turn around and it is black soil. The chickens love to dig around in it since the outdoors is covered in the horrid whitestuffs.
How many chickens do you usually keep in here? I imagine it varies.
I leave the front open on my hoop coops, the opposite end of where the roosts are at. They actually seem to like my hoop coops better than the wooden coops when I still used them, especially my ducks. I have clear plastic on most of them. The ducks must like how open they feel and not like they are trapped. I use deep litter as well, and both the chickens and I really like that. It is breaking down so fast, even now in Winter. It seems like every time I add bedding, I turn around and it is black soil. The chickens love to dig around in it since the outdoors is covered in the horrid whitestuffs.
How many chickens do you usually keep in here? I imagine it varies.
How many birds we have in there at a time does vary ... and would also depend on how long the birds were to be in there. We prefer to have the birds out on pasture whenever possible. We just had 4 cockerels in there for a good while. Before that I think we had 9 cockerels in there for a few months. Pretty soon I'll put as many as 14 BIG cockerels in there, but only if I know they won't have to stay for very long.
This coop is 25' long and about 7.5 feet wide (you could make it wider, but we have TALL people here who don't enjoy bumping their heads, so we made it more narrow so the arch could be higher). That means the coop is about 190 square feet. If you allow 10 sq. ft. per bird, you could do about 19 adult birds in there. You could certainly do more if they were Cornish X, but that would require more bedding refreshments. If the birds day-ranged fro the coop, you could easily double the number of adult birds. And you could get a LOT of chicks in there if you used it as a brooder/grow out coop (even more if you segregated out the males as soon as possible).
I might do a little breeding colony in there. A single cock and maybe 6 or 8 hens. That depends entirely on how quickly I can get the next batch of cockerels culled. And on if I have any broodies around to hatch the chicks.
You're right, with the bedding directly on the soil, and only adding a little layer of fresh stuff at a time, it composts SUPER fast. I really like that.
You're also right about our birds preferring the wire coops to the one wooden coop we have here.
My ducks ignore their coop for the most part. They have a cool hoop coop constructed with big PVC pipes, so it's movable. The ducks eat and sometimes lay in the coop, but sleep outside! It freaks me out, but they have a choice, and that's what they choose.
How many birds we have in there at a time does vary ... and would also depend on how long the birds were to be in there. We prefer to have the birds out on pasture whenever possible. We just had 4 cockerels in there for a good while. Before that I think we had 9 cockerels in there for a few months. Pretty soon I'll put as many as 14 BIG cockerels in there, but only if I know they won't have to stay for very long.
This coop is 25' long and about 7.5 feet wide (you could make it wider, but we have TALL people here who don't enjoy bumping their heads, so we made it more narrow so the arch could be higher). That means the coop is about 190 square feet. If you allow 10 sq. ft. per bird, you could do about 19 adult birds in there. You could certainly do more if they were Cornish X, but that would require more bedding refreshments. If the birds day-ranged fro the coop, you could easily double the number of adult birds. And you could get a LOT of chicks in there if you used it as a brooder/grow out coop (even more if you segregated out the males as soon as possible).
I might do a little breeding colony in there. A single cock and maybe 6 or 8 hens. That depends entirely on how quickly I can get the next batch of cockerels culled. And on if I have any broodies around to hatch the chicks.
You're right, with the bedding directly on the soil, and only adding a little layer of fresh stuff at a time, it composts SUPER fast. I really like that.
You're also right about our birds preferring the wire coops to the one wooden coop we have here.
My ducks ignore their coop for the most part. They have a cool hoop coop constructed with big PVC pipes, so it's movable. The ducks eat and sometimes lay in the coop, but sleep outside! It freaks me out, but they have a choice, and that's what they choose.
Yeah, my ducks definitely prefer to sleep on the water or in the grass. But when I force them to sleep inside they choose the hoop coops over their adorable little wooden one I lovingly made for them...
