Need Advice on Ventilation and Dust

[magikoslo]

We are in the process of building our chicken coop. We bought a house with an attached garage as well as a 2-stall detached garage. We only have 1 car and decided to convert part of our detached garage into a coop. I've read that chickens both need good ventilation and also create a lot of dust. I have a couple of questions and I would really appreciate any help that could be given.

What sort of venting would work for the coop? We are using two of the existing walls of the garage and plan to add a south-facing window. I was thinking of putting some vents along the top of the coop on both of the new walls, maybe two on each wall. Would that be helpful?

We will have a screen door on the north side of the coop in one of the new walls. It would be nice to have the whole screen door for venting, but would that allow dust to get out and make everything else in the garage dusty?

If anyone has experience with these things, please help us!

 

[Folly's place]

Welcome! Yes, you will have a lot of dust with chickens! I'm having a hard time picturing your setup, but in general, the more ventilation, the better. you can put plastic up over the north door in winter if necessary. Cover all openings with hardware cloth, not screening, and give them lots of room. Pictures? Mary

 

[magikoslo]

Are you not supposed to use screen just because it won't hold up to a chicken that wants to get out of the coop? Or is there another reason? Would it work to use the screen door and then put hardware cloth over it also?

 

[enola]

A screen door will not keep out predators.

Concerning the dust, chickens cause HUGE amounts of dust. If you are going to use 1/2 of a building for your coop, everything inside of the 4 walls will be covered in dust. Everything!

 

[21hens-incharge]

Is the screen door only opening into the garage part or is it opening into the yard?

You can leave the screen and add the hardware cloth over top of it.
YES chickens will demolish the screen as well as anything wanting in to have a chicken dinner.
They do make tons of dust. I would not have an opening into the garage area if you do not want dust in there.

 

[magikoslo]

The screen door only opens into the garage, which is secure from predators. We are still planning to cover the screened areas with hardware cloth to keep the chickens in. We also framed in a large window into the garage for ventilation. We were going to cover that with both screen (to try to keep the dust down a bit) and hardware cloth. In the winter we may cover both the door and window to conserve heat. We also plan to install one or two windows to the outside, but we are having a contractor do that work.

Here are a couple of pictures of our progress:



We plan to put the nesting boxes in the space to the right of the door, probably two rows of three boxes for our 15 chickens. I want to build them outside the coop so they don't take up space inside and so that we can collect the eggs without going inside.

We are going to put our roosts under the window and are probably going to raise the floor underneath the roosts for easier cleaning, since we'll probably clean that part out more often.




My one remaining question is whether we would need some small vents to leave open in the winter if we seal off the window and door. And would we need to add insulation if the garage itself is insulated?

If anyone has any suggestions for anything else that would make our coop work better, we are definitely open to them! Thanks for all the help so far!

 

[21hens-incharge]

Would it help keep dust down if you put in one of these for the summer use???

http://www.homedepot.com/s/gable+vent+fan?NCNI-5

Of course it would need wired in as well as having anti-chicken wire added. Thinking it would create a suction drawing air from the garage area and out the chicken area taking the dust with it.

Not sure how well it would work but thinking it may be worth a shot. Putting it up as high as you can would keep it from letting a draft on the chickens in the winter too.

Nice work by the way.

 

[enola]

Chickens need ventilation year round. Cold will not kill chickens, but damp cold from not having ventilation will cause respiratory diseases and frozen combs and feet.

 

[aart]

Will you have a run? Pop door in garage wall to outside run?
Is there any ventilation in that garage itself? Looks pretty tight.

ETAitto on the dust everywhere. I built my coop inside a large wooden shed...heavy dust on everything else in the shed.

 

[enola]

Is there any ventilation at the roof line? They need the moist air to be able to move up and away from them to prevent frost bite.