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New to chickens in AZ

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Glad to meet you, and totally impressed with your so called non-existent building skills. Great job! and you will be so glad you went with an open front coop out there in AZ. Here is an article about ventilation that also has links to coop designs, sorted by climate. You will find lots of support for your design choice there. Good for you guys! And those chicks are so darned cute! Best wishes!

Oh, p.s., you will notice that the article, from here at BYC, is written by a member (ghost writing for her chicken), and then reviewed by other members and administrators. All the articles here are like that. The reviews are helpful for newbies, like me, to sort out the most helpful, reliable articles. Use the SEARCH button to find articles on your topic, then select ARTICLES in the red letters at the top of the page. You will first see posts about your question, which can be interesting and helpful, but not as focused as a good article.
 
:welcome

Thanks for joining! I hope you enjoy your time here. Good luck on finishing your coop!
 
Thank you all for the welcome. We were not able to get everything done today because we got rained out in the middle of the day. We did get a reprieve from the rain for a few hours, so got back to work, but we had to stop early for the downpour that started this evening.

We were able to get the roof on and shingled (my brother was a roofer for years, so that was the easiest part of this build so far) before the big rain, and we got about 3/4 of the hardware cloth installed. We still need to frame out and build the door to the run, finish attaching the hardware cloth (including under the coop), finish cutting and attaching the last of the siding, get the rest of the trim installed, caulk/seal, and finally paint. As long as we don't have heavy rain again next weekend, we should be able to complete everything except paint and maybe caulking/sealing it.

I will eventually start a coop thread/journal to continue updating the progress of the coop and flock there.

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It has been a couple of long days working on the coop and run. We spent the better part of the day yesterday completing the siding and finish trim. First thing this morning we caulked and sealed the entire coop in prep to paint. While waiting for the caulk to dry, we were able to get the last of the hardware cloth on, followed by the shade cloth. We then got the inside of the coop and all of the exterior trim painted, before we called it quits for the day (we did get one side of the coop partially painted just to see what the end result will be).

After all was done for the day, we decided that the coop and run were ready to have tenants and we moved the chicks in. They are now 4 weeks old and were no longer staying in the brooder (a large box Walmart keeps pumpkins in). They were starting to jump out at will. We secured a heat lamp (VERY carefully) in the coop, ensuring they couldn't knock it over, so they should be fine with the mild nights we are having.

The chicks immediately started to scratch at the bedding and eat any food they found in it. took the the feeder and water quickly and started to explore their new digs. For now we are using a 1 gallon water trough and the small trough feeder, because they are not big enough yet to use the water nipples or feeder buckets.

Sorry, no pics of the chicks in the coop yet, I will get some in the coming days. For now, just a pic of the mostly completed coop and run. Just need to finish the red paint, and finish securing the shade cloth (after the paint is done).

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Update time.

It has been 3 weeks since the chicks went into the coop. They are getting too big to still be called chicks, but oh well. They are all doing amazing, eating like crazy, growing, and getting more comfortable with us every day. The heat lamp has been removed and they are doing great with the cooler temps at night. We have also added the feeder buckets and and a water bucket with cups and they have been quick to use both. Now we need to get them trained to use the drinking nipples. We have them plumbed to a constant water source, so they will always have fresh water to drink.

Here are a couple of pics taken right after adding them to the coop. (FYI - we have since covered the nesting boxes so they cannot get in them yet).
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This is them as of today.
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It is still too early for me tell if they are all pullets or roos (and I'm not sure I would be able to anyway) but there is one in particular that is among the larger birds and has a larger comb already. Is it possible this is a roo?

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