Good morning
I am fairly new to chicken raising and we have 16 hens currently and are raising another 25 chicks. I am ready to build a bigger coop and I was hoping to build a saltbox coop with these dimensions. 8x16x5.5 feet. Is this tall enough for the birds. We live in NYS and have very hard winters so I'm trying to minimize the dead air space.
Any thoughts appreciated.
Hi! Welcome to the forum.
You are as important as your chickens. I think more important. You need to be able to walk into a walk-in coop and be able to move without banging into things, especially the ceiling. Your chickens will be better off if you are comfortable taking care of them. They will suffer if you suffer.
In New York State you will have some pretty warm summers. Heat can be more deadly than cold. With their down coats they can handle cold temperatures really well, but they can suffer or die in hot weather. Just because you may be uncomfortable in cold weather doesn't mean they are. They do need some help in winter though.
Wind chill can be worse for chickens than for you but for a different reason. Their down coats trap tiny pockets of air in the down, that air is actually what causes the insulation effect. If a wind ruffles their feathers and allows those air pockets to escape they can get cold. They need to be able to get out of the wind. During the day they can usually manage that quite well themselves, they stay away from a blowing cold wind. But if you turn your coop into a wind tunnel and don't give them a way to get out of the wind they can suffer.
The other danger, probably the biggest one, is frostbite. Frostbite for you or them is possible anytime the temperature is below freezing, yet I've seen chickens sleep in trees when the temperature never got above zero Fahrenheit for a few days straight with no issues. The key ingredient is moisture. If there is a lot of moisture in the air frostbite is much more likely than if the air is drier. You do not want moisture condensing out of the air onto their combs and wattles. Moisture comes from their breathing, their poop before it freezes, any thawed water for them to drink, or maybe some other source. Dead air is not your friend, it is your enemy. You need enough air movement to remove the stale moist air without creating a breeze.
One easy way to do this is to have openings higher than the chickens when they are on the roosts. That way any breezes are over their heads. That breeze over their heads will create enough gentle turbulence in the still air below to get some air exchange but it should not be close enough to actually hit them with a strong breeze. That requires some clear height above their heads.
But cross breezes are not always blowing. When a really cold spell hits it is often very calm. Not to worry, nature took care of us. Warm air rises and holds more moisture than cold air. The denser heavier cold air will force the lighter warm moist air up and out any openings up high. The warm moist air from their breathing, poop, or thawed water will rise. In summer it helps to have an opening down low coming from your shady side to allow cooler air to drive hot air out, but in winter that is not nearly as important. You will get enough movement with openings up high, plus you do not want to create a breeze between the opening down low and the high openings in winter. In summer that breeze would feel good.
The higher the inside of the coop the more movement you will get due to cold air forcing warm moist air to rise. Another reason to have a taller coop.
