New here,New to chickens, and need coop advice!

[KJ6485]

Hello!!! I am new to the boards, (kind of) I have been sucking up information for a few weeks now and am just finally going to start posting.

I have ordered 13 chicks from Meyers Hatchery, which will be arriving the end of April (yay!!) We will be building a coop, we are currently looking at an 8x10 structure, after endless research I have decided to go with Poop trays (with PDZ) and sand/pdz on the floor. We will be keeping food and water outside of the coop. My questions are some that everyone probably already knows the answers just because they have been keeping chickens.
1. How far from the wall for the roosting bar?
2if there are 2 roosting bars of the same height parallel, how far between them?
3.in an 8x10 coop how many feet of roost should I have and can it be placed above the nesting boxes if there is a poop tray under?
4. For a single roosting bar , placed in the center of the "poop tray" how wide should the poop tray be to catch most falling poop?

I believe that is all , thanks in advance!

 

[countrygirl345]

In my experience with chickens, I would recommend keeping the roosting bars a least a foot away from the wall and two feet from each other. For 13 chickens, you shouldn't need a ton of roosting space, so two bars of maybe 6 feet? About the poop tray, I would make it a foot wide at least. I would know because of the not-so-little "poop mountain" that accumulated in our coop last year

 

[21hens-incharge]

If you are keeping large birds like Brahma I would go 18 inches from the wall with a 18 inch space between roosts and a little over 1 foot of space for each bird on the roost. That means 16 foot of roost space so they can have enough room to roost comfortably.
If they are standard then I would go 18 inches off the wall and one 18 inches between roosts with one foot for each bird on the roost. That means with 13 birds 13 foot of roost space.
If they are bantam then one foot from the wall and one foot between roosts and keep it to one foot for each bird on the roost. That means still having 13 foot of roost.

For the nest boxes you can have them under the roosts BUT I find I do not like kneeling down to gather eggs with a poop board in my face. I would put them across the coop from the roosts.

This nest box set up cost me about 60 dollars to make and I can turn it completely upside down to remove any shavings they shove out of the dishpans. I also made the boards for the upper nests removable so I can slide them out when cleaning. It made things much easier.





The 1x2 going across in front of each box is to do two things. Keep them from tipping the dishpans and keep the dishpans inside the boxes.
With 13 birds you should only need 4 nests. This set up in my coop actually keeps 19 birds quite happy.

 

[aart]

I'd rethink sand/pdz on an 8x10 floor, especially in your climate.
It'll freeze hard as a rock in the winter...I like dry shavings all year round.