If you could custom design your coop / run.............

[mrs1885]

Tell me what it would be like. We're very seriously thinking of selling our house in TN and moving to KY. We had really, really hoped for eastern KY but found some land we like in the southern central part of the state and we're talking to some builders now about a house. One of my 'demands' if we do this is I want my chicken coop and run done right from the beginning.

I'd like a coop for my broody hens and roo so I can have baby chicks, and one for my egg layers. Currently we have 15 chickens but I'd like to have around 50, but only maybe 10 on the broody side. So, given those rough numbers, what would you build?

 

[JackE]

What I have, A Wood's coop surrounded by electrified poultry netting, but 20' wide instead of 8'.
Jack

 

[29PalmsRanch]

I'm new here, but 2 years into building out our farm. We made a move like you are considering about 2 years ago from New Orleans to rural Southern Alabama Best thing we ever did. I've been in tech development for 26 years and it is very nice to 'unplug'. So we've been in constant building mode.

One of the first things I went to work on was "The Worlds Largest Bird Coop in Baldwin County". It's a joke, but the project got so large that we had to come up with something ridiculous for it.

The entire thing is 150 long by 25 feet wide. There are 28 pens in it. And it took me a year and a half to build. We house our chickens, turkeys, and pheasants in it. There are visual barriers between all pens from the ground to three feet up. We used 1/2 hardware cloth for everything except the roof. We used 1 inch heavy gauge chicken wire and tin for the roof. The roof is on a slant for rain water collection. Then the cisterns for the rain water are primed with solar low pressure pumps that deliver water to all of the birds and a misting system for our Temminck's Tragopans. We built the pens to hold pairs or trios of birds as they are only 8 x 12 each. We concentrated on natural environments with ground hides, perches, and nesting boxes for the pheasants and turkeys. We went more traditional with the chickens. They all get feed hay spread and changed at least once per week and after every storm.

But for us it is about producing top notch breeder stock in addition to eggs and meat. Currently we have the following in there:

Chickens: Lavender Orpingtons, Spangled Butchers, Hatch Grays, Pumpkin Hulseys, and Heritage Rhode Island Reds
Pheasants: Lady Amherst, Red Golden, Yellow Golden, Elliot's, Silver, Hume's Bar Tailed, and Temminck's Tragopan
Turkeys: Midget White

We keep our quail off the ground in large breeder cages. Those you can put together in a weekend without a problem.

Quail: Northern Bobwhite, Georgia Giants, Snowflakes, California Valley, and my favorite... Mearns or Fool's Quail.

If you want to see pictures or anything, please let me know. Your head is in the right place. We have no regrets DO IT!

 

[29PalmsRanch]

The 'coop' is the long building in the back. This is when we were in our final stages of putting on the roof and building out the visual dividers between the pens.



This is what our Lavender Orpington's enjoy living in

 

[Quailsong]

I'll be starting up a quail-keeping 'hobby' for eggs and meat in my new mini farm. We def want to get away from store bought eggs & meat (I can't handle the salt-pumped & chemical meats they sell nowadays). I intend to fix up an old shed (def needs a new roof) for an internal coop & putting at least a 20'x20' covered run/range area for them. I may splice that into two runs, and/or one smaller one for my breeding hens.

My ideal overall dream is lots of green, hideaways, grasses & fresh air for them. I want to be able to sit with them via bench inside the run. This way I've no worries about predators sneaking about, no worries about them flying away when I lift mini-runs, or whatnot. A lovely aviary for a bunch of hard-working critters.

 

[mrs1885]

Wow 29PR, that's incredible!! A bit more than I'm looking at doing, but very impressive!

QS, we've got chickens for the same reason. My husband has MS and I'm trying very hard to get away from anything processed. I got the chickens for the eggs to start and I'm hoping I can work up the nerve to do the honorable thing and raise my own meat. I figure if it's going to die and be consumed by us, then we owe it to them to know they were raised kindly and I should suck it up and take care of the processing myself. It's hubby that's the actual hold out. He loves animals and the thought of eating anything that he saw alive is too much for him. So I'm thinking maybe our chicken house needs to be away from the actual people house so he can't see them. I'm sure eventually I'll be able to raise our own meat too.

 

[Quailsong]

mrs1885, I'm in the same boat w/ the quail and meat. I can't cull yet, but one day I know I will. It's a matter of time.

My husband thankfully says he's willing to cull them and I've agreed to clean & cook them as needed. I grew up with a mindset that anything still alive, even on death's door, deserves a chance at life. However, that mindset begins to contrast when one moves from the city into a farm-life where a sick chick is better off culled & a 'Raping Roo' (pardon the expression) is better as dinner.

If you're going to have meat hens/roos, don't name anything. Pet them, tame them, but always keep the mindset (and remind others) that one day they will go into the pot. If one's got a severely injured leg (say a critter attacked it), it's better to cull it UNLESS it's your prize-winning egg layer. But otherwise it's often easier (mentally & long-term bird health) to just cull right then. This way you're not building up a mindset of "if it's injured, it's spared from culling" and instead you'd be better off cultivating a "it's hurt, it's a meat bird, better finish the job so it's not suffering anymore" mindset. Trying to rear chronically sick/injured/stressed birds will weaken your flock, reduce your eggs, & may hurt your overall health down the road.

Keep your compassion to the animals, but desensitize yourself from the 'deed'. You are giving them 'THE life' before they go. Watch vids on youtube on how to cull birds. Watch them all. Even watch the battery cage mass-produce farms. Grit your teeth, cry if you need to, take some breaks (def helps if you get nausea) but the next day go back and watch another video. If you're going to cull you need to see others do it, in different ways, with different levels of success & stress on the bird or culler. You will begin to see the 'best' way (for you and the birds) to cull & get used to the shock of actually killing your food. Also, I believe there is a support thread in the meat section for in case you feel the urge to ramble or whatnot.

As for health, vitamins, feeding, etc..

I'm doing as much research as I can. I want to avoid medicating my quail, esp since we'll be eating them and possibly selling their eggs (or meat if we get that many). I'm going the natural free-range style (albeit, covered pen & big coop in winter), Apple Cider Vinegar(ACV), Fermented Feeds(FF), mealworms, etc. They will eat our scraps, which will be easy on us for composting (what they can't eat, goes to the red wiggler worms, etc)

I've health issues, esp w/ anemia and absorbing Vitamin B. It comes from an uninformed childhood & early adulthood where I ate gluten, soy, MSG & other things (mostly processed) that I didn't know I was intolerant to. It mucked up my gut big-time. It has taken many years, a lot of trial and error, but slowly I'm going back to a healthy body & mindset. It is lots of work, but rewarding knowing I'm on the right track. My husband has hayfever issues which I'm hoping will be kept down with the quail eggs (as they're said to reduce it), and he's just as interested in raising them as I am for meat. For which I'm very grateful, I know I couldn't do this whole thing myself.

As an aside, if you ever need someone to ramble to, or a shoulder to cry on when you cull, toss me a private message anytime!

 

[Kassaundra]

Lots of ventilation, that first coop design is a good one for ventilation, I live in OK where our summers are intensely hot and long so 3 sides of my coop are wire w/ shutters that can be closed in the winter, but the roof ventilation is year round.

In my dream coop I would have it wired for electricity and plumbed.

Automatic chicken doors.

I prefer a raised off the ground coop, in bad weather they LOVE to hang out under it, it effectively doubles your floor space.

A covered run area for broodies and chicks (learned that the hard way)

 

[wsmith]

Here's a diagram of what we did, including the expansion we are currently working on.......

 

[locoguru]

wsmith WoW, wish I had that much space. Someday.