My coop, located in my shed

[farmercharlie]

I have been working on building a coop inside my shed. The shed is finished (insulated and drywalled) and I built two walls for the chicken coop. My wife and I put waferboard on the inside walls of the coop, covering the existing drywall. We have been wanting to raise chickens for years, we purchased the nesting box almost 5 years ago and I am surprised that it did not rust in the box. My next thing to do is make the pop door. Why I am writing is: ventilation, or lack of it. I've been reading many posts about ventilation and I am concerned with providing adequate ventilation in this coop. A few drawbacks to the location of the coop: the wall behind the roost is a false wall, there is a sliding door behind that I had blocked off several years ago, so I won't be able to use that wall for ventilation. So... I'm thinking about two large vents or openings/windows high on the south facing wall above the pop door. Something that can be opened or adjusted as needed. Sorry for the length of the post, but I wanted to thouroughly explain. Please disregard the door on the sawhorses, I use the room as a painting room some times. Charlie

Here are a few pictures:

 

[patandchickens]

Hi, welcome to BYC

Where are you located? That has some bearing on how much, and what sort of, ventilation you'll need. For this time of year, anywhere that a person would own an insulated shed <g>, vents along the top of the S wall would be good. I'd suggest making them bigger than you think you need. It is much easier to not need all the vent area you have, and thus leave it shut down partway at the moment, than to need more than you have

Chances are that for summertime you will want a *large* openable area on the rest of that wall and any other available walls; how important it is to have it especially large-area depends where you live.

You'll want to put a cover or wire guard on that fluorescent light fixture -- don't want birds flying up and hitting it and breaking the tubes!

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[farmercharlie]

Thanks Patandchickens. I'm located in central Illinois, state of crooks. I'm wondering if there will be enough air coming through the vents if I have them only on the south wall. But I'm also concerned about opening one of the interior walls, that doing that will make the shed smell. I forgot to say in my original post that the coop is about 12 x 12 in size, hopefully big enough for a couple dozen birds. Charlie

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Vents only on one wall can work ok if they are large enough. Definitely in wintertime (in fact, in the cold part of the year you WANT vents on only one wall). In summertime, "large enough" may entail having the entire wall open (with panels that hinge or bolt on to close for wintertime)... but it can be done. Especially if you can have something shading that opening so that direct sunlight doesn't get into the coop in August.

But, certainly warm-season ventilation is easier and better when you do have the opportunity for a crossbreeze and more vent area. Might it be possible to ventilate out through the closed-off sliding-door wall behind the roosts in summertime?

The main problem, as I see it, in venting to the rest of the shed is not the possibility of smell (a well-managed coop should not particularly smell)... it is that chickens are exceedingly dusty and you appear to have workshop equipment in that shed that you prolly don't want a thick layer of greasy chicken-dust all over. If you felt (say, next summer) like you HAD to have some ventilation through the shed, one option would be to mount a fan in a hole in the wall, blowing *into* the coop, with a cover (preferably on the coop side of the opening) that was left closed unless the fan was actually turned on. I'm not really advocating that as a prime option, but it is *an* option, if you should feel it necessary.

For now, though, if you can cut out a strip maybe 12" high and the length of hte S wall of the coop (either between studs, or with studs exposed within the vent), up at the top of the wall, and fix hardwarecloth over it for predatorproofing, and make a flap that closes it adjustably, that should give you good ability to keep air quality under control in the winter. You *will* get both exhausting of stale humid air *and* intake of fresh air through that one opening, realio trulio

Good luck, have fun,

Pat