Need Help on Coop Design from Shipping Crates

[supercoops]

Have you ever taken care of chickens through a winter? You say you got started this past spring. I would think at this time of year, with your coop, a lot of the birds are just staying out side at night, instead of roosting inside the coop. With 17 birds, in that basically unventilated box, in the winter, with temps approaching zero, it's not maybe, but a sure bet you are going to have problems. Too many birds, in too small a space, coupled with freezing temps and no way to get rid of the humidity, just from the birds breathing, You will have frostbite, and probable respiratory problems and maybe even a few dead birds. You would come out one freezing morning and find that box frozen shut, with a bunch of freezepops for chickens. Not to mention, if you get any measurable amount of snow, and the birds choose to stay in, they will get irritable, and start tearing each other up. NO WAY would I even attempt to keep more than 3 birds in there, and before that, there would be some BIG holes/ ventilation cut into it. Sorry, but that coop would be a death trap in winter, with 17 chickens in it. You might want to do some reading about the need for proper ventilation in a coop. Ventilation, is one of the most important things for a coop.

I guess it's just me. I started my chickens in early March and we were just finishing up on the coldest winter we've seen in half a century over in Kentucky. Even with everything closed down on the coop and the heat lamp going wide open -- my chickens still got cold. They were all pressed together so tight you'd need a wrecking bar to get them apart. Of course they were young birds then -- the store wouldn't sell us less than 6 chicks at a time because it's inhumane. I guess you didn't have our winter. We had extreme cold going into the early spring. As mature birds they still like to huddle when we get cooler temperatures. I like to give them what they want -- not what I want. There is no way I'd pull them apart and put three of them in a coop in the dead of winter. There just isn't enough body heat, and chickens originated from the tropics, not the arctic.

 

[supercoops]

Have you ever taken care of chickens through a winter? You say you got started this past spring. I would think at this time of year, with your coop, a lot of the birds are just staying out side at night, instead of roosting inside the coop. With 17 birds, in that basically unventilated box, in the winter, with temps approaching zero, it's not maybe, but a sure bet you are going to have problems. Too many birds, in too small a space, coupled with freezing temps and no way to get rid of the humidity, just from the birds breathing, You will have frostbite, and probable respiratory problems and maybe even a few dead birds. You would come out one freezing morning and find that box frozen shut, with a bunch of freezepops for chickens. Not to mention, if you get any measurable amount of snow, and the birds choose to stay in, they will get irritable, and start tearing each other up. NO WAY would I even attempt to keep more than 3 birds in there, and before that, there would be some BIG holes/ ventilation cut into it. Sorry, but that coop would be a death trap in winter, with 17 chickens in it. You might want to do some reading about the need for proper ventilation in a coop. Ventilation, is one of the most important things for a coop.

We had the coldest winter anyone can remember in central KY and it went into the spring. My birds were huddled together so tight that you'd need a wrecking bar to pry them apart. That's with everything shut down and the heat lamp wide open. Three chickens in a coop would not have survived our winter without some extreme protection.

As for ventilation -- the door opening is more than enough in the middle of winter. It allows too much cold air into the coop. The humidity was not a problem at all. The temperature was the problem.

 

[puglady]

It seems like this thread has gotten off topic. I believe you wanted suggestions for improvement to help increase sales. We have told you what we like to see as consumers. If put out for sale at the roadside as is, it's a drive by. If I see a couple of windows, ventilation etc I'll stop and check it out. You need to get potential customers to stop and look first.

If a Ford manager orders 90% of his mustangs in purple (because its his favorite color) but 50% of consumers like the car in red....Its really not about how you like to do things (as much as we agree or disagree with it). In this case its about what the majority of customers want. The more people your product appeals to, the more sales.

 

[supercoops]

It seems like this thread has gotten off topic. I believe you wanted suggestions for improvement to help increase sales. We have told you what we like to see as consumers. If put out for sale at the roadside as is, it's a drive by. If I see a couple of windows, ventilation etc I'll stop and check it out. You need to get potential customers to stop and look first.

If a Ford manager orders 90% of his mustangs in purple (because its his favorite color) but 50% of consumers like the car in red....Its really not about how you like to do things (as much as we agree or disagree with it). In this case its about what the majority of customers want. The more people your product appeals to, the more sales.

I try to sell what the chickens want, not what the owners want. In the end, the owner agrees with his/her chickens. IMHO, the chicken is the customer -- not the owner. The owner makes the same decisions about feed and other things. So with all due respect I do not agree with you. I want to sell what works.

I've sold fishing lures before, and fishermen end up buying what the fish will bite. When fishermen buy what they like to see they usually don't catch any fish. They want to catch fish, not purchase pretty fishing lures and spend their day without even a bite. IT makes one feel like the sucker.

Now with that said, I searched the forum for bedding and found a lot of info. Here's what some owners say that have the smarts on bedding:

Best Flooring/ Bedding

"I think wood shavings are easier to clean up."

Bedding

"We use pine shavings and we change it whenever it looks too poopy, about once a month in the summer, more often in the winter."

coop bedding - what do you prefer?

"pine shavings is an excellent bedding and keeps eggs clean."

Boy, I sure do like the idea of cleaning once a month and selling clean eggs. That turns me on!!!!!!! If the chickens like it -- I think we have a win-win situation here!!!!!

 

[puglady]

I disagree. The chickens adapt to their environment the best they can.if with all of your years of chicken experience you choose to ignore others its up to you. Good luck getting a chicken to pull out its wallet.

 

[vehve]

No one is disputing the fact that pine shavings is an excellent material for bedding, what they're trying to say is that 17 adult birds put out quite a lot of poop. Considering how much our 9 adolescent birds produce in a day, I'd say it's about a liter. With adult birds you could probably double that. That would be about 2 cubic feet in a month, one eighth of the volume of that box would be poop. That is a serious source of ammonia production. I recently dumped 6 weeks worth of spent bedding (pine shavings and peat moss which is more absorbent than pine shavings) into my compost box which is of similar size as your coop. The vast amounts of ammonia it puts out would make me pass out if I would have to spend time in there. It's ok turning it when I can take breaths outside the box, but it is some seriously strong stuff.

In the EU, you're allowed to keep 9 birds in 1 square meter of floor space (bare minimum) in commercial egg production. Most backyard chickeners would consider that bordering on animal cruelty. With 17 birds in 8 square feet, you are cramming more than double that amount into the box. These regulations are of course not valid for US legislature, but I think it's a fair point of reference.

When asking for advice, it's usually good to be ready to receive some as well. This online community represents thousands of years of accumulated knowledge regarding chicken keeping, so it might be worth listening to what the people here are saying. It is of course always a good idea to question other peoples ideas, and then make informed decisions based on them, but not all advice your receive is automatically wrong.

The argument about chickens originating from Vietnam might have some merits, but centuries of breeding has made domesticated chickens somewhat different from jungle fowl in Asia. I would not throw a Chihuahua out in 3 feet of snow to spend the night, because "he descends from wolves".

How old where the chickens when you got them in spring? If they weren't fully feathered yet, I can understand that they would huddle up for heat. Most people would say to keep chicks in 90deg Fahrenheit, decreasing the temperature 5 degrees for every week of age (even though they will survive in colder temperatures, this is just a rule of thumb). Also, for an adult bird to be able to withstand the cold, it needs to be allowed to adapt to it. Throwing it out from room temperature into freezing isn't a good idea. In nature, birds usually don't reproduce until the weather warms up in spring, so they naturally get a more suitable temperature, and mama bird is there with her body heat in the beginning. When winter comes, they're already big enough to handle the cold.

If your experience is only from younger birds, then yes, you can keep more of them in a smaller space. The 4 square feet per bird recommendation is for adult birds. If what you're trying to sell is a brooder box, then keeping 17 birds in it isn't a problem.

 

[supercoops]

These coops sell for $35 to $55. What are you expecting in that price range?

 

[supercoops]

Points well taken I think (in many cases). Fact is 17 of my chickens would rather sleep in a coop in the summer than stay outside, sleep on roosts, etc, etc, and all the other things that you all propose. Maybe it's the breed. Mine are red. They are mature size too. Not all my chickens want to sleep in a coop by the way, but those do.

Those are the facts. Human wisdom, experience, etc. do not change a simple fact of nature. As one engineer said in a meeting: one piece of factual, verifiable data is worth more than a thousand expert opinions. He was indeed right and his products always worked right. I'm an engineer too by the way.

You are in Finland. Yes, you indeed see the cold. Your summers are no comparison to ours. I'm at the same latitude as Athens, Greece.

Thanks, for helping. I'm an engineer. I take an receive input pretty well, but I can not ignore what my eyes see or my ears hear. If I could, then I would be a politician.

 

[vehve]

Points well taken I think (in many cases). Fact is 17 of my chickens would rather sleep in a coop in the summer than stay outside, sleep on roosts, etc, etc, and all the other things that you all propose. Maybe it's the breed. Mine are red. They are mature size too. Not all my chickens want to sleep in a coop by the way, but those do.

Those are the facts. Human wisdom, experience, etc. do not change a simple fact of nature. As one engineer said in a meeting: one piece of factual, verifiable data is worth more than a thousand expert opinions. He was indeed right and his products always worked right. I'm an engineer too by the way.

You are in Finland. Yes, you indeed see the cold. Your summers are no comparison to ours. I'm at the same latitude as Athens, Greece.

Thanks, for helping. I'm an engineer. I take an receive input pretty well, but I can not ignore what my eyes see or my ears hear. If I could, then I would be a politician.

The more reason to take ventilation into account to vent out the larger amount of evaporating ammonia, and to worry about heat stroke. Chickens can insulate against cold, but once you stuff too many into a small box, they don't have an efficient way of cooling themselves in heatwaves. I thought your main argument was that they need closeness to stay warm? Wouldn't that be amplified by my climate?

And isn't utilizing the collective experiences of this forum exactly what your asking for, verifiable data? People telling how they've lost chickens to heat and due to lack of ventilation?

I'm not saying not to believe what your eyes and ears tell you, I'm saying that your data gathering time span is giving you insufficient information to draw conclusions from.

 

[JackE]

Points well taken I think (in many cases). Fact is 17 of my chickens would rather sleep in a coop in the summer than stay outside, sleep on roosts, etc, etc, and all the other things that you all propose. Maybe it's the breed. Mine are red. They are mature size too. Not all my chickens want to sleep in a coop by the way, but those do.

Those are the facts. Human wisdom, experience, etc. do not change a simple fact of nature. As one engineer said in a meeting: one piece of factual, verifiable data is worth more than a thousand expert opinions. He was indeed right and his products always worked right. I'm an engineer too by the way.

You are in Finland. Yes, you indeed see the cold. Your summers are no comparison to ours. I'm at the same latitude as Athens, Greece.

Thanks, for helping. I'm an engineer. I take an receive input pretty well, but I can not ignore what my eyes see or my ears hear. If I could, then I would be a politician.

From what I can see, from your posts, you have never taken care of ADULT chickens through a cold winter. You raised some chicks, with a heatlamp in that box. Chicks do not have the same sq.ft. requirements as full grown birds. You can get away with raising a bunch of chicks in a small space, but it won't go well with full grown birds. From what you have posted, you don't have a clue about proper fresh air flow/ventilation needs with a chicken coop. Not only do you need plenty of it, for the summer/warmer months, but it is just as important, IMO, even more so, in the winter. Where I live, I can get summer temps over 100, with suffocating humidity. Then, in winter, I can get temps into the low single digits, not including windchill.

Chickens may have originated in Veitnam, but with centuries of breeding, we have birds today that are faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar removed from their tropical ancestors. Chickens today, outside of those tropical breeds, are built to handle the cold. Fact is, they handle cold a whole lot better than 100 degree heat. Adult chickens do not, and will not huddle up in a pile, to stay warm in the winter. But what they will do, is generate A LOT of humidity/moisture just from breathing. And if you don't provide enough ventilation/fresh air flow in the winter, you are going to have problems. If that moisture isn't vented out of the coop, in the winter, it will freeze on the inside surfaces of the coop, and on the birds themselves, NOT good. That little door your coop has, is not going to provide no where near enough fresh air flow, summer or winter.

Then, there is the problem with the amnonia gases from their waste. If not properly ventilated, those gases will burn the chicken's lungs out. Sometimes, chickens may spend a bit more time in the coop, during winter than out, especially if there is snow on the ground. I've seen mine stay in for over two weeks straight. The popdoor was open for them to come out, but they choose to stay in. If you get snow, and your 17 birds decide to stay in that coop, they are going to load that box up with waste, and all the nasty gases that come with it. Also, adult chickens don't like to be crowded, they need floor space. Most people recommend 4 sq.ft. per adult standard, some go with 2 sq.ft. minimum, but the more room the better. If they are kept in crowded condition, they will start tearing away at each other, and once blood is drawn, they can turn into feathered sharks.

What I have described IS facts of nature, as far as chickens go. It is a proven, and well known fact, that they REQUIRE sufficient fresh air exchange/ventilation in their coops. It is a known, and proven fact that chickens can generate mass quantities of CO2 and humidity just from breathing. And that needs to be removed from a coop by proper ventilation, and the coop needs to be properly sized for the number of birds kept in it. And, it is a known fact, that chickens have delicate lungs, that can be damaged by foul air in a improperly ventilated coop.

Now, you can go on ahead with what you got, I wouldn't try it. I look forward to, around the middle of Dec, an update post from you, telling us how your 17 birds are doing in that box.