newbie needs a coop design

[montanaSarah]

we've never done this before- we just got our baby chicks and are in the process of designing our coop. just when i think we've got it narrowed down, i read a post or see one of these beautiful coops on BYC, and completely scratch what we've decided! do any of you have some advice for us? we have 6 little ones growing fast, and need a plan soon

i would love to hear what works/doesn't work for you all, so i can customize ours to fit our needs.
thank you, thank you, thank you!
sarah

 

[Wise Woman]

Hi Sarah. I am no expert but have had chickens for 10 years now and have had 4 different coops. We are getting ready to build our dream coop. I can tell you what we are doing and why. Keep in mind that we are in our early 50's now so we are planing for people with aches and pains! All of our coops to date have been sheds. Very tall and you have to walk into them to do everything. A lot of work to clean out and to keep clean. Usually about 7 or 8 feet high with a lot of wasted space. Our current coop is at the end of the goat pen so you not only have to walk into the chicken coop, but you have to walk through the goat pen first. Very messy.

So we will be putting our new coop on the outside of the goat pen along a side walk. It will be a 6x6 raised coop. I want it high enough off the ground that I can reach in comfortably to clean it and high enough that my feed cans will fit under it. This will also give me a small outside pen for chicks as we are going to put screened doors under the coop. We will be able to access under the the coop from all 4 sides.

The actual coop will have doors on two sides. One on the side walk side and one on the opposite side. One wall will hold an exterior nest box and the wall opposite that will hold an exterior brooder. The pop door to go out to a covered run will be next to the brooder. The nest boxes will be accessible from our driveway. The roosts will go across the top of the coop from door to door and have a small ladder for them to climb up to them. I am not sure how tall I will make the coop yet. There will be a door from the covered run to the goat pen. The covered run will be 6 x 16 and the goat pen is 32 x 24, so they have lots of room to run around outside. We will be closing the covered run in during the winter and will keep their food and water out there.

We will be using dishpans in the nest boxes for easy cleaning and will be painting it inside and out. I have vintage windows to use as doors and as a window and it will have ventilation along the top of the walls as well. We will be using tongue and groove pine that we salvaged from a cabin for the walls. We are hoping that with our combination of salvaged materials and new materials that we get a nice looking coop with a vintage feel to it.

I hope this makes sense as it is hard to describe. I don't have any drawings yet, but I know what I want. I will be posting pictures as we go along.

 

[Capvin]

Simple....what I did was go click on the tool bar on top of the page that says "Coop Designs." I went through a bunch to see what and how the others built their coops. I think you will find that most of the coops on the BYC coop designs are well thought out, nice and practical. What is best is that most of them have detailed pictures of the building process. After looking I picked the one I wanted and just basically copied it.