Midwest Coop ideas...

[Shogun99]

Ok here's the scoop. 2 years ago I had a flock of about 20 chickens in the Southwest, but now my family and I are moving to Southwestern Iowa and have bought a little ranchette. We both want to have chickens and other animals, and I'm looking for ideas on what kind of coop to build. Ideally I want about 6 chickens and 1 Roo and there are some considerations that I have been thinking about.

First of all, it SNOWS in Iowa and the wind blows pretty hard from what I'm being told. Its in a tornado area and since I'm from AZ, we don't have much Snow or wind in Phoenix or NM for that matter. I want to build a coop that is hardy, but I also want to ensure that my chickens are protected from freezing temperatures. I realize that a mobile coop probably wouldn't work because of the wind, but I'm open to suggestions, especially from people who have lived in the midwest or in other areas that might have experienced the same issue.

Any and all advice, plans, weblinks, etc would be very much appreciated. Oh and we close on our home on May 6th and it comes with a HUGE barn! Woo Hoo.

 

[BellevueOmlet]

How big of a coop or how much space are you allocating for them?

 

[Shogun99]

Well I want to give them a nice square area and I'll undoubtely let them out of their run from time to time so that they can freerange on bugs, grubs, and crittiers with 6 or 8 legs. For the run attached to the coop I'm thinking maybe 10 feet by 20 feet more or less.

 

[baldessariclan]

You will probably want a big enough coop structure where all the birds can stay comfortably "indoors" for extended periods -- IA can see some extended cold periods/storms in the winter. My grandparents had a farm up there, and I remember the chicken house being pretty big. Of course, they had a lot of birds, too -- maybe 30-50 in the flock. My uncle told me that they never heated it, though -- there were enough chickens in it where it stayed relatively warm when closed up in winter storms.

 

[kittycooks]

Yup, it snows in Iowa.

You will be out of tornado alley though, don't worry to much about that. I'm in MN.

It is easy to wrap your run in 3 mil plastic (with a little ventilation) and your birds will be happy for the winter. I have pictures of my set up on my kittycooks web page. It's not fancy at all and I'm kinda envious of the pretty coops some people build, but it works perfectly fine for healthy happy hens.