how do you keep your breeds seperated?

[howellpartyofsix]

Greetings all! I am new to chickens & this site and have a question that I am hoping someone can help me with.

My husband and I are going to be building my chicken area (currently my laying hens are in my horse barn occupying an empty stall) and not sure how to go about doing it. So for those of you who keep your breeds in seperate areas (ie: bantams in one place and rir in another) how did you design your chicken coops?

My husband had the suggestion of building one coop with different runs for the different breeds. But in looking at the different pics I didn't see anything that was close to that.

I hope you can make sense of this post and offer some suggestions. Thanks in advance for you help.

Blessings,

Shelly in VA

 

[4H kids and mom]

Hmm...not sure I can help much because my breeds all run together and share one big coop. However, for breeding I do have an attached pen where I can pair up who I plan to breed so I will get pure young. Maybe it would be easiest for you to just do something like that, unless you are going large scale and want only RIRs with RIRs, etc. If you are only going to have say 5 of each breed, I wouldn't bother with seperating the coop(s), just build a seperate area for breeding them if thats what you want to do.

 

[Picco]

I have all my birds mixed together now but I will be building a new coop pretty soon that will have two separate areas. My plan is to have two rooms that will be 10X10 next to each other but with a 4' wide feed room in the middle. Each separate coop will also have a separate run. During the off season (fall and winter) I will allow them to mix but beginning in spring I will separate the flock into two groups, one for each coop.

 

[ella]

You can find pics of mine here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2128&p=2

It's great for seperating the roosters from their offspring during the time when I collect eggs for hatching.

 

[howellpartyofsix]

Ella, I love your coop - what are the dimensions?

BTW, thanks for sharing the pics and info

 

[allen wranch]

I keep my breeds separate in a long coop with inside separate pens and outside runs. There is an inside walkway so I can access the birds in any weather and have a place for storage.

This is an old picture. I have since put some 2-3' solid barriers between runs where the roosters don't get along with their neighbors.

 

[ella]

Allen Wranch inspired my coop although I had to make modifications because of the cold weather here. We're nearly done with our outside pens, I'll get some pic's up soon.

Anyhoo, to answer your question my coop is 10x16.

 

[howellpartyofsix]

To Allan Wranch - I love this and that is exactly what I was wanting to see. Thanks so much for showing me a pic of your design. It's great!

 

[allen wranch]

You are quite welcome. Glad to help.

You learn a lot with each coop you build, but the main thing to remember is build bigger than you think you need.