Is a raised coop better than a...........

[Mahonri]

I wish mine were further off the ground. (higher)

Mine sits about 6 inches off of the ground... wish I'd have made it a foot or more.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Sounds like your weather is pretty close to mine with a low temperature almost at single digits Fahrenheit and a summer high almost to 100 F. Since this is what happened this year, I'd imagine you could get much more extreme weather occasionally.

I think a ground level coop would probably be best for you, but that is my personal opinion. Others have had success with raised coops as you can easily see with the other posts. Here is my reasoning.

The normal space for a bantam is around 3 square feet per bird in the coop or about 0.28 square meters. For 12 bantams that would be about 3-1/3 square meters if I did the math right. But you plan on hatching chicks. If you let mama raise those chicks, she will need extra space so mama can protect them. Also, I believe this 10 to 12 is the standard number. When you hatch out chicks, that number grows. A chick does not need the space a grown chicken needs, but how much depends on how big they get. I don't know what you plan to do with the chicks you hatch but I see a real potential for your flock size to grow. You need to be able to clean the inside of the coop. You can build a raised coop small enough for a dozed bantams that you can reach everywhere to clean, but it you get much bigger it gets harder. And you can build a raised coop big enough that you can get inside it to work, but it gets more expensive as it gets bigger. So, from a size viewpoint, you can go either way.

For your summers, you need a well ventilated coop to keep them from overheating. You gave the maximum daytime temperatures but for the coop the night time temperature is what is really important. I'd suspect your nights stay fairly warm. A raised coop is easier to ventilate. Chickens actually handle cold better than heat, up to a point. With your temperatures, they can handle the cold as long as they are not in a draft and they have adequate ventilation. They still need ventilation so the humid air and the ammonia from the droppings is dispersed in cold weather. It can be done, but it is a little harder to stop drafts with a raised coop. Your temperatures will be cold enough they can get frostbite if they are in a draft or don't have adequate ventilation. A ground level coop will stay warmer in the winter than a raised coop. I can't overemphasize the importance of good ventilation yet staying draft free in the winter. I'll give you a link to Pat's ventilation page that talks about it. The way I did mine, I have an opening about ground level that is open in the summer and blocked in the winter with openings well above the roosts that are open all the time. You might want to not have a high-level opening on the side the worst winds normally come from.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=1642-VENTILATION

You are in a rural area and the coop will be a distance from the house. The potential smell is thus not that important to you. The smell will not be bad anyway if you can keep the coop and run dry but the potential is always there. If the smell were more important to you, I believe a raised coop is easier to actively manage the poop. With your situation, I don't believe that is a critical criteria.

I'm guessing those rains you mentioned were in one storm, not an annual rainfall. That sounds like a monsoon. Wow! You may not want to level the run area too much. It would really be beneficial for it to have enough slope to drain and to be positioned where water does not run across it. You might consider a berm on the higher side to divert the water to keep it out of the run. Also, build the roof on your coop to slope so the water does not run into the run. Same with the coop. You don't want water running into the coop. That is certainly an advantage of an elevated coop. With those rains, you might consider covering a part of your run, the area right outside your coop, to keep the area you go in and out dry. With the chicken poop and the rain, it can get pretty bad pretty quickly. I hauled in some extra dirt to raise the floor of my coop to keep runoff water out. And my run is on a slightly higher section of ground so it drains well and I put in a swale on the higher side to divert the water away. It stayed pretty dry in that 120mm rain in four hours we got a few weeks ago.

I think you could go either way, raised or ground level. But I'd suggest ground level as I think you will need more room that the minimum and this is easier at ground level. Also, I think the winter temperatures will suit a ground level coop better. If you do build a raised coop, you will probably have a need to get under it, maybe with a rake if not your person. I'd suggest making it high enough so you can retrieve an injured chicken or get eggs out of a nest if one decides to lay under there. And if it is raised, it certainly needs to be high enough that certain predators (think rats and snakes) cannot hide or nest under there.

Good luck whichever way you decide. I think you will enjoy the experience.

 

[Bantimna]

Quote:
Thank you.

We get about 20-80 ml of rain in a storm.
What I've read it sounds like a non-raised coop.

 

[cnj-tx50]

Ours is raised with an expanded metal floor so easy to clean and eay to walk on. It's 2 1/2 feet off the ground and is 8x12 and has window on the east,west and south side. We have lots of heat here in summer so the floor allows alot of breeze in and it's open underneath. When it gets cold we put hay bales around east,west, north and 1/2 of the south side as we still have lots of sun in the winter. It's very easy to clean and walk around in and very secure.