Help with coop floor and wall please

[valentinetodd13]

Dang. I hope the skunks out here aren't as hungry.

 

[aart]

UM, well..you know what??? Here's what we used. I just had to check....

That is hardware cloth.


Stuff in pic below is chicken wire.

They are both coated with vinyl, but the difference in shape of holes is obvious.

 

[igorsMistress]

Welcome to BYC

Your climate is similar to mine. Making that an open front coop would be easy. Hardware cloth the front and add a human sized door. With a dirt floor it'll be quick and easy to clean. Check out deep litter methods. In your climate you'll possibly have to add a little moisture to get the litter to decompose but it's not a lot of work.

If you want a skirt just dig down into the dirt and extend the walls down with hardware cloth a foot or two. Another option is to extend it out from the walls a couple feet at the surface and cover with a little soil. My friend did this, then planted seasonal flowers. She could easily tell if something had tried to get in.

Good luck, I'm anxious to see what you decide to do

 

[chicknmania]

Argue all you want it's the same thing. I ought to know I bought it! The reason the shape of the holes looks different is because the wire was stretched from the skunk pulling on it. In this store the poultry netting and hardware cloth are in different sections. I agree that it doesn't look the same but it is. I'll send a pic of what is on our tractor and you'll see because it's from the same roll and the hole shape is much different.

 

[aart]

Argue all you want it's the same thing. I ought to know I bought it! The reason the shape of the holes looks different is because the wire was stretched from the skunk pulling on it. In this store the poultry netting and hardware cloth are in different sections. I agree that it doesn't look the same but it is. I'll send a pic of what is on our tractor and you'll see because it's from the same roll and the hole shape is much different.

I'm not trying to 'argue', just clear up any misconceptions to help educate us all.
1/2" 19ga squares can't be stretched into 1" hexagons.
I was very interested to see how animal got thru HC, but that isn't the case.
I very clearly see here, away from where skunk got in, the hexagonal holes of chicken wire: Circled the double layer to the left and single layer to the right.

 

[lazy gardener]

Chicken wire, by it's very design is easy to tear. If you look at the way it's woven together, the wires are twisted around each other at the top and bottom of each hex to complete the pattern. Enough tension will break the wire, or even untwist the wire. No matter what kind of wire you buy, be sure it's galvanized.

As aart says, hardware cloth has square grids, and should be welded. It is not as easy to tear.

 

[chicknmania]

Ok I concede on this one. I looked at the roll we had leftover and it was in fact chicken wire. I went to look at the tractor and it was reinforced with hardware cloth like I said. I was totally confused so I asked my nephew who is the one that patched the hole both times and he did say he accidentally bought and used chicken wire since we had used up the hardware cloth. Sorry for the confusion it was just inattention on my part because I KNEW that I bought hardware cloth to reinforce the tractor from the raccoons and I thought we still had plenty left. Embarrassing but it's his fault lol.

 

[valentinetodd13]

Thank you all for your replies and help on this. This is all new to me so any mistakes made or issues people have had are helping me out tremendously. I'm sure I'll still have a tons of my own though.

 

[valentinetodd13]

So I think I'm going to skip the whole wall idea and do a half wall leaving it mainly open to the run. Just saw a coop down the street and it was completely open with a little 3 sided covered section at the end.
I want to at least put a half wall up though to protect from the wind.
Any thoughts?
Thanks

 

[Alaskan]

So I think I'm going to skip the whole wall idea and do a half wall leaving it mainly open to the run. Just saw a coop down the street and it was completely open with a little 3 sided covered section at the end.
I want to at least put a half wall up though to protect from the wind.
Any thoughts?
Thanks

sounds like a plan.

Heat and predarors will be your biggest factors... so closed boxes are bad... quality wire is great.

How much wall you need depends on how bad your wind gets.

As long as there is a back corner someplace out of the wind and rain to put a roost... that should be good.

My baby sister in central Texas has a coop with only the bottom half walled..top half wire, deep overhangs.

So her roosts are where they get blasted if it is windy... but she doesn't get windy too often (but can get strong wind storms in nasty weather).

She hasn't lost any birds due to weather....she has had the setup for maybe 10 years now. So yeah...her perches get more than just a draft...they get a breeze... but she mostly deals with heat.