New Member with 5 chickens we got for free in a nice coop

[DobieLover]

Hello and welcome to BYC! Glad you joined.

It sounds like you are dealing with a tiny pre-fab coop that is woefully undersized for your flock. When everything is undersized it gets messy FAST. In more ways than one...

If you are serious about getting chicks in the future and want the experience to be pleasant for ALL involved, you need to build a real coop and run.

Chickens should be provided 3-4 sq ft of coop floor space per bird in a coop that offers as close to 1 sq ft of PERMANENT ventilation per bird as you can manage. LF chickens should have 12" of linear roost space per bird and 1 nest box per 4-5 layers.

I always recommend a MINIMUM of 15 sq ft of space per bird in the run and also to make sure the run is COMPLETLEY predator proof. That means solid construction with a solid roof and a predator apron around the setup to prevent predators from digging their way in.

I would not recommend setting them up on pavers or concrete. You should keep them on the soil in a large enough area for the number of birds you plan to have then cover their run with lots of dry organic matter. I like wood chips. You also need to ensure that the entire setup slopes away so that water does not pool or collect in the run.

Lastly, poop boards are IMHO the best invention by the chicken keeping gods. I use them and would never go back to any other method. It is just so easy to keep the coop clean. I scoop the boards each morning into an old kitty litter bucket and that gets dumped into my compost bin when full. I then dump a bucket of very fine saw dust over it to dampen down the smell and help it compost better.

 

[rjohns39]

Hi and welcome to BYC We're so happy you've decided to join us

 

[Dr Evy]

Welcome to BYC. We’re so glad you joined!

 

[Grammy60]

Hello and welcome to BYC So happy you have joined our flock.

 

[Geoff Swenson]

Would you include pictures of what you're working with here?

There's a nesting area where the wood is leaning but it has a rusted tray that we have to fix.

It seems a bit small

 

[gtaus]

And if anything else I've said in passing indicates general cluelessness, please don't worry about offending me, I'm more interested in doing this properly than having my feelings hurt.

Welcome to the BYC community.

I really appreciate your openness to accepting thoughts from others. More pictures of your coop and run would help, and measurements for people to consider. Specifically, I think a picture of your nest box(es), clean out tray, coop dimensions, and run dimensions would help.

Looking at the photo you uploaded, I would initially say that a coop your size is not made for very many chickens. It would really be helpful to have the dimensions of the coop itself - not including the run. I think you will find most people here on the BYC community will offer the rule of thumb of 4 square feet per bird for inside the coop itself. The other rule of thumb often expressed is 10 square feet per bird in the run.

The coop is mostly nice but the galvanized pan that slides in to it is thoroughly rusted.

If you are referring to a clean out pan, then I would not be concerned about some rust. As long as the pan is intact, that is the important thing. I'd save my money for other improvements first.

The other problem was the way the coop plopped on top of their lawn had turned their environment into a disgusting poopy sea of mud.

Yuck! That's sounds bad. No matter what grass you put the chickens on, they will rip up everything down to bare dirt in short time. The grass cannot grow as fast as they can destroy it.

But, you don't have to live with mud. When my chickens ripped up all the grass in their beautiful grassy run, I dumped about 2-3 inches of wood chips on the ground. That worked very well, looked nice, and prevented a poopy sea of mud in the run.

I'm thinking of buying concrete pavers and plopping the coop down on paved area perhaps with threw feet perimeter around the coop so there isn't so much mud.

Chickens love to scratch and peck the ground. I would look for any way to get them on ground and off pavement. When the chickens rip up all the grass, you can put down wood chips (I get my wood chips for free at our county landfill). That worked great for me, but after a few months I started dumping in all my grass clippings, weeds from the lawn and garden, leaves, etc... into my run. That builds up a nice mulch inside the run and the chickens love to scratch and peck in the litter.

Your current run is much smaller than my setup, so my system would probably not work for you, but a good 4-6 inches of organic material for the base of your chicken run should work out great. It prevents the ground from getting muddy, the chickens can scratch and peck the litter without hurting their feet, and their poo will automagically disappear into the mulch requiring little to no maintenance (depending on number of chickens and size of your run, of course).

It would be really helpful to know what your intentions are. If you want to keep this coop and run, as is, then I would suggest you limit the number of chickens you keep. That would be better for both you and the chickens. You certainly have a nice setup for a small number of chickens, but, too often, people are told they can house a flock of birds into a small coop, and that is just a bad idea.

You will find no shortage of suggestions here on the BYC community forums. I hope you find some of them useful. Again, welcome to the forum.

 

[N F C]

Hi, you've received some great info from the previous greeters. If you need some ideas on a new coop for your flock, check out the Coops/Runs under the Articles tab...you'll find what other members have built (and many using re-purposed materials that can save $$): chicken-coops.12

Best wishes!

 

[007Sean]

Howdy, Geoff and Welcome to Backyard Chickens.

Happy to have you here with us. Enjoy your time here at BYC!

Thanks for joining our community!

 

[Tookie]

Hello and welcome to BYC!

 

[Starburst]

Hello, Geoff, and welcome to BYC! So glad you joined!
Make yourself at home in this amazing community!

A lot of great information has been given above - I definitely agree with @DobieLover, though - if you currently have five chickens, and are thinking about getting some more, I highly recommend that you consider getting a bigger coop and run.

My first chicken coop was very similar to the one you have pictured above - although it looks very cute to start out with, it unfortunately isn't so great in the long run. If you live in an area that has lots of rain or bad weather, the coop might rot and fall apart, as mine did. Additionally, while I now have a poop board, I used had a pull-out tray for my chicken coop - and while I'm sure it works great for many people, I would like to offer a word of caution - not only did the frame get warped, and thus couldn't be pulled out efficiently, but the metal also rusted and eventually popped out of the frame. The sharp edges were exposed to little chicken feet, and while I quickly got it fixed, it was a turning point for me, and I began construction on my new, walk-in coop.

Having a muddy ground isn't much fun for you or the chickens, but chickens also like having access to the dirt, where they can scratch for bugs and dust bathe. I recommend that you try covering the entire run, if possible - if you want to be extra handy, you can even add a gutter to bring the rain to a rain barrel, which can be used for watering your chickens or your garden. (So long that there aren't any toxins.)

While building your own coop and run might sound more time-consuming, it'll be well worth it in the long run, I promise. Here's a link to a great article on planning your chicken coop.

Additionally, on your question regarding introducing chickens to the flock, the answer varies depending on how old your chickens are, and your setup. While it varies, a simple way of chicken introduction is to do the following:
If you have chicks, wait until they're fully feathered and it's warm enough for them to be outside.
If you bought chickens, make sure to quarantine them prior to introduction.
For the first couple of days or weeks, set the new chickens in a separated part of the run, where they are visible to the current residents of the coop. Let them get to know each other with a barrier (like fencing) in between them.
Once the chickens seem relaxed with each other, start letting them out together in an open space, with places for the chickens to hide, if need be. Make sure that there is plenty of food and water while doing this, and try to supervise.
After a couple of days, if the chickens seem to be getting along well (keep in mind that there will probably be some pecks as they sort out the pecking order, but it shouldn't get to the point of full-on blood shed), try letting them be together without supervision in the daytime, and eventually integrate them into the coop so that they're together during both night and day.
Again, this is just one way of doing it, and there are multiple methods. Regardless, I hope this helped, and best of luck with your chicken raising!