I live on a small mountain, therefore, very little level land. My original 8x8 coop was built on a southfacing slope with land sloping from my house down toward the coop and on down a hill to a gravel road (if you can call it that) that is part of my property line. The attached original 11x20 pen is on the front of the coop, uphill from the coop itself. Later, we added 12' to the coop, a pen extension, so that it was basically two coops with a door between and each with it's own pen, as you'll see in the pics I posted below. We are quite wooded with lots of oak, maple, hickory and sourwood trees.
Here are the problems:
Birds scratch at the top of the pen, which is filled with leaves all fall and most of winter. They literally move the dirt down the hill to the face of the coop and basically "bury the building", though it is about a foot off the ground at the front. I am forever raking mountains of leaves, wet (heavy) much of the time. We placed a log across the pen a few feet from the coop, so it sort of terraced it, but they're great little earthmovers and that didn't fix the problem.
Second issue is the sunlight. The sun rarely hits the pens close to the coop due to the coop itself blocking the sun and throwing the pen into shadow, making it retain moisture in rainy weather.
The former storage shed, now the Blue Orp and Delaware breeding coop, has attached pens behind the building. They are in sunlight most of the day, so they dry out much better.
We just today decided that we will move the pens from the front of the main coop to the backside of it, which slopes down to our perimeter livestock fencing (set about 15 ft inside the property line) to the road. Below that road is my neighbor. The livestock fencing will have to be higher at the back, but it will actually make a much larger pen, sloping away from the coop, and allow the birds to get underneath the coop, out of the rain or safe from hawks. There is already a cleanout door on the back that will be the new pop door when we build a ramp. That pop door, seen propped open in the 4th pic down and next to the exterior nestboxes, is away from prevailing winds and under a bigger overhang than the front pop doors. Then the vacated chicken pen will be seeded with grass since the new pen will be larger and I can probably keep them in it for long enough for the grass to grow some.
So you see what I mean, here are some pictures:
The original coop and pen:
The coop with 12' addition and second attached pen (used chainlink we had so it doesn't match well, but is strong)
Entire setup with three coops; the Firetower Coop (currently vacant), the main coop 8x20 and the shed turned into breeding coop:
This will be the new chicken yard:
Here are the problems:
Birds scratch at the top of the pen, which is filled with leaves all fall and most of winter. They literally move the dirt down the hill to the face of the coop and basically "bury the building", though it is about a foot off the ground at the front. I am forever raking mountains of leaves, wet (heavy) much of the time. We placed a log across the pen a few feet from the coop, so it sort of terraced it, but they're great little earthmovers and that didn't fix the problem.
Second issue is the sunlight. The sun rarely hits the pens close to the coop due to the coop itself blocking the sun and throwing the pen into shadow, making it retain moisture in rainy weather.
The former storage shed, now the Blue Orp and Delaware breeding coop, has attached pens behind the building. They are in sunlight most of the day, so they dry out much better.
We just today decided that we will move the pens from the front of the main coop to the backside of it, which slopes down to our perimeter livestock fencing (set about 15 ft inside the property line) to the road. Below that road is my neighbor. The livestock fencing will have to be higher at the back, but it will actually make a much larger pen, sloping away from the coop, and allow the birds to get underneath the coop, out of the rain or safe from hawks. There is already a cleanout door on the back that will be the new pop door when we build a ramp. That pop door, seen propped open in the 4th pic down and next to the exterior nestboxes, is away from prevailing winds and under a bigger overhang than the front pop doors. Then the vacated chicken pen will be seeded with grass since the new pen will be larger and I can probably keep them in it for long enough for the grass to grow some.
So you see what I mean, here are some pictures:
The original coop and pen:
The coop with 12' addition and second attached pen (used chainlink we had so it doesn't match well, but is strong)
Entire setup with three coops; the Firetower Coop (currently vacant), the main coop 8x20 and the shed turned into breeding coop:
This will be the new chicken yard:
Last edited:
