Interior Coop Pics

[bairo]

6chickens in St. Charles :

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I would wait for after-halloween sales on storage plasticware. I don't know about your chickens, but mine absolutely LOVE reds and oranges, glowing colors DH refers to as "the womb" colors. Our red ones were $1 each after christmas. I had some salmon/deep orange and purple ones for another project, also for $1 after last halloween.

A sharp kitchen knife carves out the doorway space nicely. If you cut out the space into the rounded corner of the box, the chickens like it even more, they like a rich reddish "cave" to be private in. Just be careful to sand down the edges, and make sure you don't leave any sliver crevices for them to catch a toenail or feathered ankle in.

plastic boxes flat like that should work fine as long is there is a roost type bar a few inches out front of them. When I first started I build a small frame and used 5 gallon plastic buckets turned on their side. The chickens seemed to really like them, but sometimes I saw them having footing problems as they left the buckets. I just recently decided to build a traditional 5 hole from plywood. I'll have to get some more pics up of that. I have all my pics on my public picasa album which there is a link to on my byc page. ill try to get better pics of inside in the next couple days​

 

[6chickens in St. Charles]

{My husband was concerned about the particle board flooring & rot, and thought a predator could chew thru that, but I see you solved that with the vinyl covering. I was thinking just don't put the flooring in and meshwire the floor instead. Or just meshwire under the flooring, so if it does rot, the wire is there.}

OK that's my biggest ultimate dream coop talking.............

I want the base of an inground pool under my coop, with hardware cloth underground 18" around the concrete edges to keep predators from digging in, and DEEP LITTER all winter which I will gleefully shovel out into my compost heap in the spring...........heck I'll even throw compost INTO the deep litter all winter to help keep them warm and busy and keep the lurking histoplasmosis and gaseous ammonias in check...

the "just mesh as a floor" thing will still disturb the hens at night, have you ever seen a shrew dig? They make zappy noises and dig like tasmanian devils, they're very disturbing at night. Might be more successful at peaceful sleep for the hens if the coop is attached to concrete for storm safety or concrete posts with hardware cloth to 18" underground all around to keep snakes and varmints out.

One guy in Mississippi who often blogs here on BYC has a good deep litter system, the hardware cloth is buried 18" deep surrounding the coop so the birds get a good night's sleep and free range all day, but the coop is on bare ground inside, he turns it and turns it every couple weeks and adds kitchen vegetation scrap. I'm thinking that's what I'll have to do, I'm into composting and I luuuurve to make rich loamy soil with my chicken's poop and orange peels and pine chips, its heavenly.

I totally agree with your fear of predators chewing through. They have thumbs too, y'know. They would use powertools if their teeth and claws weren't feeling optimal.

 

[Hillbilly Hen]

Lots of great ideas here!

Here is my coop https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=386902

 

[LiLRedCV]

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Okay. I just love this because we were looking at the Lowes sheds the other day. One was on sale, I figure prices now might be a little better, at least in cold weather areas. The one on sale was I think $698 for a 6 x 8, which is smaller than what I'd like, but the 10 x 10s weren't all that much more expensive - I think they were $998, you assemble yourself, the sign said it takes 2.5 hrs. to assemble. (HAHAHA) Comes without roofing.

My husband was concerned about the particle board flooring & rot, and thought a predator could chew thru that, but I see you solved that with the vinyl covering. I was thinking just don't put the flooring in and meshwire the floor instead. Or just meshwire under the flooring, so if it does rot, the wire is there.

Would have to put vents in. And I like windows, so add a couple windows, esp. for hot summer nights.

I absolutely love your clear roofing - never thought of that. I bet your birds will love that. Do you think there will be heat loss issues in the winter?

The thing I love about the sheds is that they open up so fully so you can really get around and clean it out. I was thinking a ladder roost on one side like you have.

Did you have any regrets about your shed kit, or anything you would have done differently next time around? I know they're not the highest quality shed, but for the price, they're good enough for me.

No way would something like this take just a few hours to put together!! Not unless you were a master carpenter and had help... even then? That'd be up for serious debate! LOL One has to ensure a level surface to even remotely think about building such a kit and, depending on how irregular your location, that can take a long while.

We bought our 10x10 shed kit from HD on sale for $649 (then subtract a military discount and another discount 'cuz we found mold on some of the pieces when we went to unpack it), so it was a real bargain... We bought a lot of high quality HD wood scraps on the real super cheap untreated cedar to build the nest boxes/brooder and the roll of (12'x10') vinyl for the floor ran us under $50.

So far, no regrets, but the girls only just moved in too... One change hubby made today was to add a latch on the INSIDE of the double doors so they can latch together. Reason being is I was in there to gather eggs earlier today and check on the girls settling in and the one door (not actually latched shut) swung wide open on me when the wind picked up through the ventilation. Almost had 1/2 my flock escape! They normally free-range it, but have been locked in their new coop since yesterday (trying to get them all settled in before letting them back out again).

We WILL BE ADDING exterior doors to access the nesting boxes and brooder on the north wall from the outside!!! We haven't done it yet since inclement weather is already moving in (rain, rain, and yet MORE rain this week) and we wanted to get the girls in there all safe and snug. Once those doors are in, it'll make it that much easier to collect the eggs and not disturb the girls.

I would like to add some East and West covered vents for air circulation during the (slightly) warmer summer months... and I'd like to add a window to one of the double doors so I can see where the girls are before I open one of the big doors. Easy fixes!

The way you properly put on the clear corrugated roofing panels actually allow for ventilation - we added extra bracing with spacers for potential snow fall weight.

We used this exact corrugated roofing on the considerably smaller coop we built last summer. I only felt compelled to add a heat source for that coop one day last winter the week over Thanksgiving and that's when we had over 20" of snow on the ground! Outside of that? They seemed to weather the winter just fine with that and their natural body heat (and we had a pretty nasty and wet winter!).

 

[bairo]

6chickens in St. Charles :

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I have to wonder about your chickens' poop? Our chickens had runny sticky poop when we had a bag of Nutrena feed. Once we switched back to Purina Layena or Purina flock raiser, their poops became firmer and lovely. (I'm sorry but I'm a nurse and sometimes the truth is that some poops are lovely, compared to the unlovely ones

) (True, I guess I'm wallowing in poop from sun up til sun down, and then some!) (

)

Purina Layena and Flock Starter works for us. I'm not saying it would work for everybody, but I am saying that your environment and your feed will seem to have a combination that works, vs one that doesn't. Keep trying to tweak that nutrition until you get lovely poops. I'm sure you can get what you want.

Our chickens' poops are more like everybody elses' turds, that is, you could pick them up with your hands or a tongs if you wanted to, they're easy to pick up with a pooper scooper, they're not wet or sticky.... the only time I have to scrub is after they've had bananas or certain fruits like grapes. this week, DS made a cornstarch science project which the birds accidentally ate, BOY oh BOY was that sticky on the driveway!

I had the same experience with a co-op brand and then dumore. I went to purina for both the scratch and the layer pellet and the poop quality was much improved. Purina is only a dollar a bag more and we get coupons for 3 off every other month since we signed up on the web site. I will admit though that since we got the cochins....the quantity has gone way up...they are pooping machines​

 

[Billy-jean]

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Does anyone like my coop? or are the pics too small? I don't know how to get them bigger

 

[NHchicks]

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- sorry, had to laugh, thinking about the issue of coop insecurity.

Beeliz, I looked at your pictures last night and I thought - wow, that deck looks amazing! And I tried to click on the pictures so I could see better, but they just wouldn't get bigger. The thing is I'm 50 and fighting the trip to the optometrist to admit I need magnifiers, so I just couldn't see them, but from what I did see thru my old age blur looked great!

I think there may be an option when you upload to do thumbprints, you may have clicked that.

 

[Billy-jean]

Haha,,Thank you,,I laughed too when I saw your comment about coop insecurity!!

I will try and repost them bigger if I can,,,and by the way,,50's is the new 20's

 

[NHchicks]

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Good job!

I'm so glad I ran into your post since that was exactly the way I've been thinking lately. I've heard people here say that the pre-built sheds from HD/Lowes won't last a terrificly long time and aren't the highest quality, so I was thinking of even looking at some shed stores locally, but for the price, I can't imagine the HD/Lowes sheds wouldn't be worth it. You just have to modify them. There's something about an open, spacious, 10 x 10 (OR LARGER - ha), big-door-opening, modifiable shed that is really appealing.

Yeah, I think when Lowes estimates its build times, it measures the time on fast motion. I've seen other of their do-it-yourself timeframes listed with online reviews stating: NO WAY did it take that short of time.

I would love to keep up with your latest adaptations and thoughts about your new shed coop, and any photos you have. I hope you keep us posted.

Regarding the hardware cloth flooring, I never thought about the spookiness of having critters TRYING to chew their way thru. That's a good point. Our (hopelessly too small) coop now does have a hardware cloth floor, mostly over dirt (small rock foundation for leveling), with about 4" of shavings on that, but maybe my girls do get freaked out at night when predators chew. Fortunately the hardware cloth keeps it as tight as Ft. Knox.

I'm just so ready for a new coop I'm about to burst. It's never a good time to peel out another $1,000, that's the only holdup. But a good deal would turn that table I think.

 

[Zonoma]

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How do I do it? I only take a picture of the interior once a year and after a thorough scrubbing. That's how! Right now my nice robin-egg-blue interior looks spotted. Who knew that chickens could poop on walls?!