How close is to close?

[texasshell]

After realizing that my skills in building are very limited and my husbands as well (and the time involved), I have half decided to convert one of our out buildings to the chicken coop. They are in there now, just not the entire floor space as they are only 3 weeks old.

One concern I have is this may be a bit close to the house. The building as it stands is about 4 feet from our back deck and 20 feet from the back end of the house. We are also enclosing this back part of the deck for me to have a room to groom dogs in, so after it is finished about 4 - 6 feet from the back corner. The pen would run along side of the building away from the house. I think that it would offer some security for the chickens as well and getting electricity to it would be a breeze.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

 

[CrazyBirdLady]

"How close is too close" to the house is entirely your preference.
Will you have a rooster? If so, he will crow in the morning and it will be early. If you sleep light and don't want to have a live rooster alarm clock every morning it might be too close.

Other than that I can think of no other reason why distance from the house would matter much.

Good luck and post pics!

 

[bturbo87]

besides what was said above, the only other thing i can think of that may be an issue would be smell, but thats only if you dont give them proper ventilation, and keep everything cleaned up once or twice a week.

 

[Boo-Boo's Mama]

In our small town city ordinance requires coop/run be 50' from neighboring houses.

 

[bufforphfan]

If you keep your chickens in the pen all of the time and do not change the bedding frequently, you will eventially have fly and odor problems, depending on the temperatures and number of chickens, of course. If You use removable "dropping boards" under the roosts and clean them frequently , it will help a great deal in keeping down odors. I scrape my boards off iregularly nto a compost can, using an old hoe blade. My coop is very close to the house and I do not have any problems.