I need help :( can't figure out coop layout

[skylavaulter]

Our coop is 8x4. Here is a drawing of it...

I can't figure out where / how to fit roosting bars for 10-12 chickens. We have 12 chicks now. Willing to rehome 2 to make this work but I'd rather not. I have 6 feet of wall space on the wall that the pop door is on. Or I can do some sort of platform over the nesting box end of the coop and roosting bars on top of that, which is what I started, but it just seemed so crammed in there.

the plywood in the picture would be a platform, but itd be covering the whole width of the coop, essentially 4x4ft. That means im ducking under a 2 ft high platform to reach half the coop when cleaning it out. Help! What would you do?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Adjust your access door over and perhaps a bit smaller so you can have a few long roosting bars on wall opposite the nesting boxes. Say one a foot or two off ground and other three or four feet off ground.

The highest one should be a foot from wall (I say should but 10" I'd think min. for large fowl) and lower roost two feet from wall.

 

[PapaChaz]

there's absolutely no reason NOT to put it on that 8 ft wall above the pop door. I've done my last two coops this way and it works fine.

My current coop, I put the roost above the pop doors. I built a poop tray 36" above the floor and the bottom roost is a 2x6 above that. I have two pop doors, I sectioned off the area under the poop tray so that one half of that wall is my brooder/quarantine cage. it has access to a pop door, and I can fence off that half of the run when I need to






this last pic is my first installation. It was pointed out with my agreement that I'd put it too high, so I lowered it. You can see the brooder cage in the first two pics. The poo tray is filled with about an inch of sand with half a bag of PDZ sprinkled on top

 

[skylavaulter]

Right now the width from the edge of the access door to the tip of the wall studs is only 8" (then 4" more to the actual wall between the studs). I can see putting one 8' roosting bar there since between the studs it's 12" out from the wall. But that only gives me 8' of roosting for 12 chickens. And is it ok to have a roosting bar over the pop door?
If we decided to move the access door over (which id hate to do at this point) i have a question on that. The access door is already cut out. How do you go about replacing plywood to the coop frame?

 

[PapaChaz]

Right now the width from the edge of the access door to the tip of the wall studs is only 8" (then 4" more to the actual wall between the studs). I can see putting one 8' roosting bar there since between the studs it's 12" out from the wall. But that only gives me 8' of roosting for 12 chickens. And is it ok to have a roosting bar over the pop door?
If we decided to move the access door over (which id hate to do at this point) i have a question on that. The access door is already cut out. How do you go about replacing plywood to the coop frame?

how tall are the walls?

instead of going through all the trouble of moving the door, just start at the far end from the access door and do 2 six ft long roosts, one above the other. Make the top one about 12" from the wall, drop down 12-15 inches and put the lower one about 18" from the wall. Put the bottom one about 3' above the floor. That should clear your pop door, and would give you 12' of roost space.

you're gonna laugh first time you go out there at night and they're all crowded together in about half the space you build for them, BUT they do need room to get up there, flap around a bit and move around cause Betty don't want Sally next to her, so she makes Sally move over so Gertrude can get between them..........

but yeah you can put them above the pop door with no problems, and if you do a double one above the other it won't interfere with your access door.

if you're determined to redo the access door, just nail up some 2x4 pieces inside the studs where the door is cut out, like it would be a double stud almost and nail up the piece you cut out to them. Those wouldn't really even have to go all the way top to bottom, just sister them in beside the existing ones so you have something to nail to

 

[PapaChaz]

also, see how I notched the frame for the 2x4 to sit into? a clamp or a screw through from the bottom (predrilled to prevent splitting the frame) to hold it down and prevent them from jumping around and knocking it off, but easy enough to remove and lift the roost board out to give you a little bit more room to get in to clean when you need to

 

[skylavaulter]

Ok I figured it out! I just laid everything where it will be to show you for now. The two poop board panels will be flush with each other and with a roost running the full 8' on the one wall and 4' on the other, we are at 12' of roosting space for 12 chickens. The biggest poop board width I could go with was 12"but with the space between the wall studs that adds another 4" of width. The roost bars will sit out 10" from the wall in between the studs (6" out from the studs). I am using 2x2s for roost bars but plan to change to 2x4s in the winter so they can warm their feet. I am sticking with 2x2s now so they have 2 more inches of board space under the roost bar. I don't think this set up will catch ALL the poop, but it should catch a lot of it. Looking at it now I am so glad I didn't go with my original platform idea over the back half of the coop. This makes the coop feel so much bigger!

 

[PapaChaz]

wonderful! looks good!

 

[skylavaulter]

Thank you so much for the help! I couldn't think straight on this part of the coop because of where the access door is, and it was driving me crazy. It's snug but it fits in the space allotted and sits above the pop door. Now it all seems so simple... I'm smacking myself lol.

 

[skylavaulter]

There! Just need to add the roost support bars so they don't sag and the front trim piece to hold the PDZ. You guys rock thanks for the help and photo inspiration!