That will be a nice addition. Yeah, 2x4s doesn't make for a very large vent - you need something like 3.5 linear feet to give you a square foot of ventilation, which means two 8' walls gives you about 4 1/2 square feet. Which is too bad, since as another poster pointed out it's a really nice place to put ventilation (high and protected).Thank you, I am still going to add another vent to the back. I was thinking 1'×7' opening along the top. The rafters are made from 2x4's but I am assuming this does not add enough ventilation still. We are running errands today but I can get the exact measurements of my current openings on the 2 sides and see if an additional 1x7 opening will be adequate for ventilation.
Wait, I just looked back at the pictures, and are there soffit openings on all 4 sides? That would double the ventilation to 8 or 9 feet so half of what you need. I just assumed it was built the usual way, with the roof sealed to the walls along two sides. But I just saw that you have those nice protecting overhangs that are constructed with sort of short rafters at right angles to the main ones. (I'm sure, like soffits, they have a technical name, but that one I don't know!)
I came to the realization of just how little ventilation open soffits with 2x4 rafters gives you when I was reading a thread on someone else's coop where that was going to be most of their ventilation - they didn't have as many chickens as you, but the coop was smaller so the walls were shorter (i.e. less wide), and definitely only rafter tails on the two opposite sides. I didn't post on that thread, but was curious enough to quickly do the math in my head (instead of just kind of mindlessly reading as I will admit I sometimes do!).
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