open air coops

[CrazyChickieMama]

I Love your coop!!!

I think I'm going to build something like that too!!!!

 

[WestKnollAmy]

Since we live in the south we are able to keep the coops fairly open. Our 3 stationary coops face the south and are open on that side but we have put up tarps when the wind is bad.
And this is a tractor that DH built that is open all the way around for the summer but we put tarps on 3 sides for the winter.

 

[imfowl]

I am so glad that some of you guys that live in the south posted pics of your runs/ coops. They look a lot more like mine than the other ones I have seen on here, but I didnt realize those people live in colder climates than me. My chickens always did fine with the open design, but I was starting to think I was mistreatin them or something. This is an awesome thread. Please post more pics. I will try to get mine on here today.

 

[ArizonaDesertChicks]

Quote:
Nestboxes weren't added yet when this picture was taken because the chicks were still young. My chickens love their open coop and I don't have to have someone over in the mornings to let them out when we are on vacation.

 

[cgmccary]

imfowl wrote:

but I was starting to think I was mistreatin them or something.
​

LOL! For a long time, I thought the same thing too.​

 

[Henrik Petersson]

I'm confused.

Many of you say open coops are good if you live in a place where it doesn't get too cold. But in the article, open coops had been made where there was deep snow in winter. How can that not be too cold? If the criteria is "where humans would get frostbite outside, chickens will get frostbite in open coops", then you certainly shouldn't be able to have an open coop where it's snowing, right?

Some of you recommend open coops, with the openings covered up in winter. That means no ventilation whatsoever in the winter. How is that better than an ordinary coop?

 

[Mahonri]

My chickens love to go "indoors" in the heat to cool off when it's 115, but I also put cold water in their waterers frequently, sometimes adding ice.

I need to make 2 or 3 open air breeding pens with some extra shaded areas under some oleanders with nest boxes.

... can't keep my eyes open... will check the bator one more time.

 

[MobileChickenCoops.com]

It has been my experience both having spent a few years in Indiana and the rest of my life back home in Texas that an open air coop provides adequate shelter in the cold as long as the back of the coop faces the north to northwest. My chickens will often times be out of the coop when the temps have been in the teens scratching and pecking in the snow. In the Texas hill country the temps can and often do fall into the teens and I have had no problem raising young chicks even in an open air coop with a heat lamp. The key is breaking the north wind with the back wall. Here are some of my coops both stationary and mobile. Having used both I can say that I much prefer the mobile. I can just move it and leave the mess behind unlike my other coop that needs to be cleaned regularly.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
The criterion isn't "where humans would get frostbite". Quite definitely not. Unless you mean "in just a short time".

The main thing to notice about the reprinted articles "open houses" however is that they are DEEP DEEP DEEP. Even the colony-style ones are deeper (measuring back from the open/part-open side) than most peoples' backyard coops; and the long style houses are, what, probably 30+ feet long, with just the one short side open. That means the wind does not penetrate nearly so much. I can tell you from experience with horse run-in sheds that there is a WORLD of difference between a 10' deep shed and a 18' deep shed. The latter gives a really good area of dead air at the back.

So you can't apply features from one size/shape of structure directly to a totally different size/shape of structure. Nor one with *quite* a lot of chickens in it vs one with a lower stocking density.

Some of you recommend open coops, with the openings covered up in winter. That means no ventilation whatsoever in the winter. How is that better than an ordinary coop?

I haven't seen anyone recommending no ventilation whatsoever.

You cover the big open wall, yes. But the OTHER walls still have their ventilation openings in use, of course!

And in my case if I were building a wire-front coop up here, which I probably *would* if I were building a new coop at all, I'd simply arrange its winter cover to have ventilation openings *in* it

It comes down to what you're comfortable with, risk-wise. Would I leave a backyard size coop totally open front up here? No. Could you? Yes, and if your breeds were chosen intelligently and you didn't have real bad swirling winds at the site you could quite likely get by without serious winter injury most of the time even here in southern Ontario.

Would I build an open-front coop, and leave it open all winter, in Massachusetts? Sure, quite possibly if I had a flock of a hundred kajillion birds and a house the size they show in the old article. But if I just had a dozen birds in a backyard sized coop, no. I might leave it open *some* of the winter but personally I would rather err on the slight side of caution (I would certainly not run a light or heater routinely, but I *would* close the building in so I could control draft and temperature-loss)

JMHO,

Pat​

 

[LuckysMom]

Oh man, my husband is going to kill me. He just spent the last two weekends building a hen house because I kept whining about the chickens getting cold at night and wet during the day when it rained. Our set up was basically a large pen with wire sides and top and a roost tucked up under an overhanging section of our shed roof. It is open in front where they sleep at night. But I was worried about the cold, and also about the occasional hurricanes we get around here. So he finally built me a hen house. I'm to paint it tomorrow, and we'll attach it to the coop after it dries. Oh geez, all that work and it sounds like they were probably better off without it.
Well, at least I'll have a place to secure them when the next hurricane hits.
I'm not even going to tell him about this thread.