Our coop is 8X8. The door is in the SW corner. We are putting new windows in--one on the south side and one on the west. My big question is: where should the roosts and nest boxes be? For 10 years, the roost has stretched from east to west about 4' from the floor and 2' from the north wall. The nest boxes are on the east side in the south corner. We are out in the open and have westerly prevailing winds that got up to gusts of 70 mph this winter. I covered the north and west walls with feed bags this winter for insulation, but it was a relatively mild winter, so I don't know how effective that was. My one complaint about our current set-up is that it's a huge pain to clean. The roosts get in the way. Any suggestions? Besides "don't build a square coop."
I'm trying to figure out your dilemma... our coop area is almost square, 8' x 9'. The popdoor is on the east wall under the roost/poopboard. There are windows on the north and south walls. The nest boxes (3) are on the south wall under the window. The people door is on the west wall. There is a high vent opening on the east wall. When we do a clean out, we remove the ramp giving us a completely open floor. Is your floor space open? Does your roost run down the center?
We will be building a new 8 x 8 coop this summer that will be raised about 18" to 24" off the ground. The south wall will be one large window. We will also make a storm window for this for the winter. The north wall will be two large doors (with windows in them) that open for cleaning out the coop and again we will make storm windows for the door windows as well. The west wall will have two vintage casement windows at floor level that will be used for their door to go in and out and for me to reach the corners when cleaning out the coop. The east wall will hold 4 external nest boxes. We have a vintage wooden ladder that we currently use as a perch and it will go in to the new coop running from the east wall to the west wall in front of the north wall doors. I will be having hubs install it into some U shaped brackets so it can be lifted out for cleaning. There will also be an additional roost also running east to west in front of the south wall window. It is actually a bench from an old picnic table, but we have it in our current coop and several of the girls like to roost on it. Since it is a bench, it isn't attached to anything and can be easily removed for cleaning. This design seems like it will work on paper when I sketched it out, so I am hopeful it is a good design because I will have to live with it forever. HTH. Good luck to you!
Are you in Berrien county? How many birds do you have? Pics or a scaled sketch of your floor plan would help.
