Landing strip length

[Folly's place]

I overwinter 40 to 43 chickens, including bantams, in my coop. It's a combination coop/ roofed run, 24' x 14'. Slightly smaller than yours, and about fifteen bantams in the group. It's divided into five sections, that can be left open, or closed off. When there's snow, or predator issues, it's big enough, but I wouldn't want more birds in it!
Make yours bigger, or cover part of your run, or something. I do wonder if things won't be a bit crowded with fifty birds in there!
In summer, I have at least twenty or thirty more, with the chicks.
Mary

 

[Foster's Freehold]

I am also going to build a compost hoop coop. Selling compost is part of my business plan. I'm going to put a pop door on it that can stay open so they have access to it 24/7 as some days I don't get up at daylight due to health issues. I figure the breeding pens will only be up 4 months of the year, same with the brood pens. So they will have that floor space too. Nest boxes and other things will be stacked like aart has designed.
I think I've thought of everything over the last few decades, which is how long I've wanted this. Thanks to a legacy from my mom, I can do it like I want now instead of making do.

 

[Hopperkiller]

With chickens being chickens and ignoring the useful things we do for them such as ramps. I know at least some would be fliers lol. I think I'm going to do as you suggest lazy Gardener and put multiples the short way, 3 ft tall with 6 foot between them. Will have to think if that will give me enough roost space.

Have to agree. They need plenty of flying or flapping room clear of anything they can bump. The 3 foot high suggested is the max. My dad warned me my 4 foot roost was too high and flight lane (32 inches) too narrow and he was right. My addition has roosts that are just above knee high. Seems like less collisions and softer landings.

 

[Foster's Freehold]

I just worry about getting roosts higher than nest boxes. I really don't want the boxes on the floor, these knees don't appreciate it anymore lol. I'm going to start with the nests at 18in off the floor, that means the top of it will be at 34 in and if I have a second row, will be 50 inches. So that's just over 4 ft high but roosts should be higher lol.

Might have to raise nest boxes to 36 off the floor on both sides of the doorway and put a shelf above them for storage and food and water beneath them. I dunno, I keep reading and changing my mind. Gonna have to put down the puter and get with the pencil and paper on that one.

 

[squadleader]

If you're serious about selling eggs, you'd really benefit from community rollout nesting boxes. It's a myth people need multiple boxes, assuming of course the hens aren't physically separated from the one nesting box.

Checkout post number 646 on this page, if you're not familiar with community rollout boxes and their benefits.

I think it's a nice selling point to educate your buyers about the protective bloom that's naturally on chicken eggs when they're laid. That egg is fine at room temperature longer than 30 days, and any cook will tell you, it's better to cook with eggs that are at room temperature.

However, the moment you wash an egg, the bloom is gone, and it's best to refrigerate that egg from then on. Eggs that roll out from under the hen, the moment they've been laid, roll into a collection box the hen can't reach, and the eggs are usually spotlessly clean. This method also prevents egg eating from ever starting in a flock.

Collecting eggs needs to be efficient, and especially if you're going to be selling them, the last thing you want is poopy eggs. The rollout nesting box completely solves that problem, otherwise, you're going to be wasting your time washing eggs.

Here's the thread, post number 646:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...es-ingenous-design-post-it-here.41108/page-65

The rollout system has made traditional nesting boxes completely obsolete.

You can buy them or make them.

 

[Foster's Freehold]

Thanks squadleader! Those are brilliant. and I can put it on the inside of the greenhouse part, less worry about frozen eggs that way!! It will give me another roost area, and I bet I can set the roosts so that one of them is right in front of the nest box door! Twofer lol.

I'm thinking of about 40 hens to overwinter, that would be my max of layers. When what I breed gets to laying age, I'll cull out some of the older ones who haven't made the grade in what I am trying to develop. Figuring on three eggs per hen per week in the winter, that give me 10 dozen eggs. I'll use one, family will get a few.

I'm looking to have chicks, compost and plants as my main revenue streams. There is a really popular swap meet right down the road from me, so whatever I have left will go there.

 

[squadleader]

You know what you're doing. I just didn't know how many different holding pens would have laying hens. If they're all in the same area and can use the same box, that'll be simpler of course.

It's easiest to buy them, but if you need several, it might be worth it to figure out how to build them.

They could be free standing with little legs to get them to whatever height you want. Mines 18 inches off the floor and very easy for me to check inside the nesting box, and to collect the eggs from the rear collection box.

There's no real magic to this system, it's just a slanted floor with a fancy plastic mat like mine, or a simple piece of long pile astro turf on a slanted wooden floor, passing under a divider at the back wall, and into the lidded collection box.

If you're placing them in a building, you don't even need them waterproof. I like the rear rollout because it's through my wall, but I also like it because the front rollout boxes are under the perch, and I'm guessing they're going to get poop on them.

I don't have that problem with through the wall, but if the chickens have access to the rear collection box lid, I'd make it have a high angle slant, so they couldn't climb on it and make a poop deposit on it.

Haha whenever I go in my coop, and want to set something down, there's never a place because I don't have any horizontal surfaces they can roost on, that I don't intend for them to roost on, and that I have counted on the poop that comes from that roosting place.

Every single place beneath a chicken, is always subject to poop, that's some kind of physics law I think, and always figures heavily into my thinking!

 

[Foster's Freehold]

lol mine too. I have to have some flat surface to work, or I end up putting my coffee on the ground where the chickens I do have now either drink it or knock it over. I'm going to put a kitchen countertop on hinges over the food service area. That way I can flip it up when I'm not working in there.

I'll have a regular single nesting box in each of the breeding pens. I have figured for four hens per pen so this should work. Not so important for them to stay superclean as they will be for hatching. If I don't get a broody, the swap place will incubate for $1 an egg. They've been doing it for years so I guess they are good at it lol.

Non breeders and after breeding season I'll move the little nest boxes, break down the breeding pens into a couple of grow out pens. This will give more room for roosts and floor space. I'll break down the runs for the pens too.

All the pens and runs for the breeding and brooding will be made of panels of hardware cloth. Zip tie a couple together and bam! new pen. Don't need it any more? Clip, clip and stack in the big barn.

I'll set them through the wall into the greenhouse, put a set of ladder roosts in front of them with one roost being close enough for an entry perch.

There will be no problem with me ending up with a sloping floor lol. I don't measure twice, more like 12 times and even then its even odds that it won't be straight or the right size.

 

[Alaskan]

I know that high perches can be a problem with chickens... but for some reason I have never had an issue.

My higher perch ...I think at just over 5 feet, is on the long side of my 16x8 shed... so for a comfortable flight path, the chickens would have to hop down to the lower perch (on the short side) and fly down from there.

In my 8x8 coop... both sides have poop shelves with perches. ..at maybe 3 feet... to get down from there... I guess they have to fall?

Anyway... no broken feet or concussions. ..

I only have 2 nest boxes, both super wide ones (2 chicken size, or 3 at a pinch)... but my girls also love to lay in the highest poop shelf, in the back clean corner... so not a problem.

both nest boxes hang from the underside of my perches. .. but I really like the community roll out ones.

A lady up here uses them, and the eggs roll up against pipe insulating foam..with heat tape inside. .. so no frozen eggs.

As to your greenhouse... are you sure the chicken coop won't block sun?

Also... I keep thinking that if I could rebuild my greenhouse (up here, the long side faces south.. source of sunlight) I would build it with a solid insulated roof and solid insulated north wall. Heat loss here is crazy.

 

[Alaskan]

also... I was going to say. ..

be super strict in regard to rooster personality.

I now have great roosters ... I can divide them up, put them back together. .. and there are only tiny squabbles. No big bloodshed!

My Spitzhauben roosters I can run at any rooster to hen ratio and the girls still look nice.