My chickens don't like my coop! What am I doing wrong?

[Dead Diamonds]

They used to always go in their coop at night by themselves. I was doing the deep litter method by just adding fresh shavings on top about twice a month. But then I ran out of shavings and kept forgetting to buy more and I guess I let it go for too long. It started to smell bad and the chickens stopped going in there by themselves at night. I removed all the old litter and replaced with new shavings. It now smells great but the chickens still do not want to go in there by themselves at night. I have to scoop them up and put them in there every night

It has a hardware cloth floor.

Even though there is fresh shavings, just a few days later I pick up the food feeder to refill it and there is white fuzz mold on the shavings underneath the feeder

My intuition is telling me this is the wrong design. The litter should be in an enclosed weather proof area. Because it rains a lot and it just gets all wet and nasty in there. I feel as if this whole thing needs to be lifted off the ground. I suspect the ground underneath the coop is now super nasty and is breeding bad insects. Because even though its new fresh shavings, there are still a few tiny gnats and other super tiny bugs crawling around.

This is my first time having chickens. When I started this a few months ago in November 2018 I had 3 chickens. About 2 weeks ago, a few days after I cleaned the coop with new shavings, Penelope was wheezing/sneezing. I went to work and bought VetRX. I come home, only 6 hours later, and she was near death. Her comb turned purple. I poured a few drops of the medicine in her mouth and this seemed to make it worse. And then right there in front of me she started flopping around and died on her back with her feet in the air It was a horrible experience and made me feel like a terrible human being.

Another thing I noticed was two of them had dark black oil spots near their comb on their head, which then progressed to a small bald spot. I'm pretty sure its from them scratching their itch. After I changed the litter, their bald spots grew back (new feathers with a lighter color).

I suspect they are not eating as much when the feeder is inside the coop, so I put their feeder outside the coop and they made a mess with food on the ground around the feeder. A few days later there is white fuzz mold on the ground where the food fell.

 

[PirateGirl]

Ok, I have read through most of this, and skimmed some bits. I think at first there was some misunderstanding with terminology. I understand that ideally you would like to work with what you have. I don't think you have to start over 100%. Provided your chickens have access to that lovely large yard you have much of the time, since you live in a warm environment, their coop is really just a place to sleep and lay eggs. Ideally if you can lock the door behind them at night they will be safer. Your goals seems to be dealing with the damp, and making the coop more desirable than the deck or next to the AC unit.

I think if you can get your whole structure off the ground it will help. You mentioned putting it on cinder blocks and I don't see any reason why you couldn't do this. This will help with your moisture issues, and also chickens instinctively like to roost on a high spot for safety, so having everything a little higher will make it more attractive to them. I would run your roost bar the long way instead. Sometimes chickens don't like to snuggle so close with others in the flock. Sometimes it's hot, sometimes one is a bit of a bully, I don't know, but making the roost bar longer now that they are full grown will allow them to decide how close they want to be to each other. I would then add a wood floor to the wire cage section. This could even just be half of the floor, so when they hop in through the open door or hop off the roost they have a solid landing pad. It looks like your setup is protected from wind by your property's wood fence on two sides. You may or may not have to add wood walls around some of the wire cage section. You could alternatively attach something like a tarp or shower curtain on the side the wind comes from typically. Do they normally lay in the nest boxes now? If they do, then I really wouldn't mess with those.

I think you have a structure you can work with. Yes, 4 square feet per bird is a good guideline, but what my birds need where there is snow on the ground most of the year and strong winds and what your birds need in a warm environment are not the same. I think you can work with your open design, and with minimal modification it may be more attractive to your flock.

 

[PirateGirl]

I'm going to throw out a few things that spring to mind. One, you mention mold growing near the feeder in a short amount of time. There is likely more mold present that you aren't readily seeing. You mention sneezing and wheezing after you changed the bedding. This could be just dust from the bedding, but it could be that you stirred up the mold/spores and this is what made your chicken ill. If you can move your coop to a new location, bleach everything and start fresh with new bedding you hopefully get the mold issue under control.

You mention itching and feather loss and black spots. Without seeing the black spots, it's hard to say what this is as there are a variety of things you might call "black spots." The itching and feather loss could be due to mites or parasites of some sort. Often they live much of the day in the bedding and the cracks of the coop and will bite the chickens at night. The chickens could know this and this could be why they don't want to go back in the coop. The below article is good for helping to identify parasites as it has some good close up photos of what to look for.

https://the-chicken-chick.com/poultry-lice-and-mites-identification/

There are lots of reasons chickens might not want to go in your coop, and I could be totally wrong here, but I'm offering up one thing to look out for.

 

[PirateGirl]

Thanks for the replies. I'm pretty sure they don't have a lice/mite problem anymore. The bald spot regrew new feathers and they are no longer scratching their heads. What do you think?:
View attachment 1669307 View attachment 1669312



This is exactly what my gut is telling me to do.



what?

The other thing is, the food gets on the ground around the feeder, and this just turns to mold. It happened on the ground out in the open, with plenty of breeze. So I feel like I should not have the food feeder in the coop. Same thing with the water feeder, it just ends up on the ground around it and creates damp litter that takes a while to fully dry out.

The bird in your photos has very healthy looking feathers. Perhaps she was just molting, birds get itchy when they molt too.

I think a waterer with nipples will be good for you so that it can't spill and add to an already damp environment.

There are a few different kinds of feeders that are "no spill" feeders. They are not perfect but will hopefully help keep spilled food to a minimum so less has a chance to get moldy.

If you decide to move your existing coop to a different spot in your yard consider if there is any spot that is a little bit higher. Higher tends to have better drainage and be dryer in general.

 

[21hens-incharge]

Sorry but that is the recommended size for a chicken. I’ve been rasing birds for meat and eggs for 10 years and that has always been the standard for any area.

I am 20+ years in with chickens. More square foot is often needed when birds have to spend time cooped up due to weather.

Yes it is often recommended to have 4 square foot per bird in the coop. It is not a hard and fast rule though.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Yeah, so that coop sounds tiny. So here's what I think happened. I think it got very inhospitable in the coop and run as you described. The chickens got to roost somewhere else for a bit and found out that it was MUCH better. Chickens like space and fresh air, and they got that. Now they don't want to go back because their old home, even when cleaned, is just not as good as sleeping outdoors.

4sqft per bird in the coop (Coop being the "house" for the chickens to sleep and lay in) is important for a small number of chickens like this so they each have room to maneuver their bodies in the mornings and at night. 4sqft (2x2') gives a chicken enough room to stretch their legs, flap their wings, scratch at the ground, turn in a circle, preen, jump on a roost, etc. without running into another bird. With only a few birds (2-3) the likelihood of both chickens preforming a space-occupying activity (such as listed above) at the same time is pretty high.
Now that's less important when you have 50 birds. The chances of every one of the 50 birds doing something that requires standing away form eachother at the same time is pretty low. So for more birds it's easier to fudge the numbers. In a group this small they really want that space.

So... The reason stores sell pre-fab coops like this varies but it comes down to money. This coop WOULD fit, say, 2-3 serama chickens. But they are this big:

Compare to a shamo who would not even fit into your coop:
http://www.asilclub.spruz.com/gfile...rot_beak_asil_by_mullapudi_narendranath_1.jpg
Or, alternatively, space concerns are considered arbitrary. Consider the industry standard egg battery cages:
https://p.globalsources.com/IMAGES/PDT/B1157555442/Automatic-Egg-Chicken-Layer-Battery-Cages.jpg

So they will always tell you how many chickens will fit into your coop based on too-tight quarters and then claim it's for small chickens or "industry standard" sizes (ie, 1.5sqft/bird). And they will gladly sell you tiny coops for tiny birds or insufficient space without saying "don't put full sized pet chickens into this" because money.

So, 4sqft indoors, 10sqft outdoors, minimum, per bird, until you have more than 6 chickens.

If you fix the mold issues in the run (the wired part of the coop), they may STILL not want to return because of how small the space is. And they will probably live just fine if you force them to sleep in the coop now that the coop and run are clean. But they're making their preferences for sleeping location plenty clear, and there's probably a good number of things wrong with your coop/run that make it uncomfortable for them other than a few bugs.
So if you want them to WANT to go back into the coop, you should give them a space that's nicer than sleeping on your porch. If you want to force them to go back regardless of what they want, shut them into the coop and run for a few days like you're teaching them where to sleep all over again and they'll get the hang of it. But otherwise they've made it pretty clear that they think the grass is greener outside of their coop.

 

[A_Fowl_Guy]

How many chickens do you have? That coop looks too small for them.

 

[rosemarythyme]

are you looking at the right pictures?

In most set ups the coop is the strictly the enclosed section. I see a few circular holes with hardware cloth on the side. Are there more vents I'm not seeing under the roof somewhere? Or are you saying this is open concept and the solid section is not closed off from the wire section with a wall?

 

[21hens-incharge]

I would do a "do over" and redesign everything.

Mold is a serious problem.

If it were mine I would move the coop and bleach the inside of it then allow to fully dry.

Since you live in a wet climate I would skip the deep litter, raise the coop 2 feet off the ground, out in a bottom while raising it and keep the feed off the ground in a very dry area.

Your coop looks like it could use more ventilation too.Y

What is the cord going to?

 

[PirateGirl]

Going with what @21hens-incharge is saying. If the coop is raised then the air flow underneath should help keep it dry. A wood coop sitting on the damp ground is going to be prone to rot as well, so hopefully your coop will last longer.

Since you said mold was forming under your feeder, also keeping the feeder and waterer off the ground my help eliminate these spots that seem to gather damp and are prone to molding. Here is a link to lots of feeder and waterer designs, but maybe something hanging under the now raised coop would work or perhaps a homemade PVC feeder (since pipes wouldn't be on the ground) would help and/or a PVC water system. There are a lot of good ideas out there.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/category/feeders-waterers.26/