do I need to have any other sides open? The entire south side of the coop is going to be open, that's the way I've designed it. What I don't know is if I want the east and west sides open. The coop is going to be 16x8 (16 W->E, 8 N->S) The North side has to be closed because of my breeder pens. The West side faces the house. The East side faces a field that has either Wheat, Corn or soybeans depending on rotation, this year it's corn. We are in NC, very humid. Highs in Summer of 100 without heat index, lows in winter in teens during the night.
Hello fellow North Carolinian! I am in the NC mountains west of Asheville, and I frequently have storms that come in from the south side- I think you need to make sure you have enough covered/protected area that your birds can stay out of the rain, possible snow and winds- is there any protection on the south side that can keep rain and snow from blowing in- keep it draft free in the winter? Also, I know in the summer, the angle of the sun here is such that the south side is hot, hot, hot- what is the angle of the roof? If the sun will beat in the open side all day, that might be too hot -is there lots of shade elsewhere?
The south side is open now and with the way the shed is it's only sunny about 2' in. What kills it is the afternooon when its hot and the sun is almost to the back wall from the west. In the winter we put up OSb and plastic.
North Carolinian here as well! You got a picture Zahboo? I am wondering if you'd be saving yourself effort and protecting the chickens better if you made the whole side or half that wall a drop down, and in summer prop it upwards with a coulple planks. this way if thers a heavy rain storm, you can close it to protect them, and in winter you can just close it down instead of trying to tarp it off with OSB and plastic. ? Also if you made it drop down/pull up you'd add a bit of extra shade in the open underneath. Just a thought. If i can see a pic of what your working with maybe I could give you some other ideas? I can be very unconventional though - lol. Goodluck!
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=365191 That's what we got so far. We used to have the hinged thing, but I don't know.
You asked whether or not you needed to have more than one side of your coop open. As it is right now, you've got plenty of ventilation, so no need for the other sides of the coop to be open, but the other responses brought up some good points. What are you going to do when you have to close that side up to protect your coop from the weather? You're still going to need plenty of ventilation in the winter - but I guess you already know that if you made it through last winter. The southern exposure is tough here because it's the side that gets the sun all day long. That's the reason the south side of our coop is completely closed and windowless. It just gets too dang hot here in NC. It looks like you're really trying to stick to a budget, but perhaps there's some way you could extend the roof out over the south side somehow. If you could build a sloping roof that was high on the north end and sloped down towards the south end, it would help shade the interior of your coop and provide some protection from storms coming from the south. Most of our storms seem to come from the west, but it's not unheard of from them to come from the south. Tarps work great for shade, but don't tend to last through very many storms. Maybe over time you could collect some supplies from freecycle or craigslist that you could use. What you do to protect the coop from wind and weather will inform what you need to do about ventilation. There's always patandchicken's ventilation page for ideas on that. Good luck.
We just do little by little. On the old coop before expanding it the south side was open with no issues. But I didn't know if I should open others.
