I now see that it's more about the chicken keepers convenience and maybe not what is good for the birds.
You are partly right, because it does have more to do with the keeper's convenience.
But the extra height does not harm the birds in any way.
So this is win/win situation (good for people and good for birds), not an either/or situation where someone's going to suffer.
I would love to see the inside of a walk in coop design to see how you set up the nest boxes & roost to see how the birds navigate that large area.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/categories/large-coops.20/
This part of the site has many articles about large chicken coops. Almost all of them are walk-in coops.
Many of the articles have photos of the inside, usually near the end of the article (because they tend to have construction photos near the beginning.)
Here are a couple specific ones that I noticed have interior photos:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/coop-build-woods-style.72527/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/aarts-coop-page.65912/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...hed-into-palace-for-super-spoiled-pets.73008/
For interior arrangements, I personally, I go for very basic:
--nestboxes along one wall or part of one wall, with a perch in front so the chickens can fly to the perch and then step gently into the nest.
--roosts/perches along at least one other wall, so I've got clear space to walk in the middle. It's best if they are high enough for the chickens to walk underneath them without bumping their heads, and also higher than the nests.
--feed & water in the middle of the space, either hanging or up on something like cinder blocks or milk crates.
--plenty of room for me to open the door and walk in to access everything.
How the birds navigate the area? The same way they navigate a run or navigate while free ranging: they walk, run, jump, fly. Some people put in ramps, but I've never had chickens that needed those (Silkies, Frizzles, and some heavy breeds might.)
When you walk in are you walking in the bedding on the floor. Again I'm not attacking or criticizing I'm just curious how that works.
How it works to walk on the bedding on the floor? Um, I put on my shoes or my rubber boots and walk on it, the same way I walk on anything else.
It's not really any different from walking across my living room, or my yard, or into a horse's stall, or into a goat shed, or any other place I might want to walk.
I've kept chickens for years, and it never occurred to me to wonder about that before-- chickens walk on it and so do I. No big deal.
I was under the impression the raised coop was helpful when cleaning and replacing the hemp/straw flooring in the coop by putting a wheel barrow under the ledge and pulling it out at waist level. When using a walk in type do you use a rake and a shovel?
Rake & shovel usually work fine, but it depends on the bedding. A mat of hay or straw might require something like a pitchfork to stab in and pull off pieces, while fluffy shavings might be easier to scoop with a snow shovel (wide flat blade that can scoop a lot at once).
If you're fit enough to crawl under a raised coop or into a coop with a low roof, you are probably fit enough to put bedding into a wheelbarrow from a low floor or a raised one. And if you toss the bedding out the door into the run, you can skip the wheelbarrow entirely.
But it is possible to have a coop that is both raised AND walk in, if you really want to have the floor at wheelbarrow height.
