post your chicken coop pictures here!

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
I want to add in here.... KISS..... Keep it Simple Silly ... at first. Basics. learn the husbandry basics you cant go wrong. Shavings in the coop and what ever you like in the run... Still keeping your options open down the line. You will find what works for you and your skill set.

I started out with a welded wire cage no roof One wall a single round roost screwed to the wire in the cage and four EE hens.... I bought four chicks at the feed store and Storeys guide to chickens or some such off the shelf book.... I brooded them outside on the back porch with a 100 watt light bulb.... in a chicken wire cage. Had 4 hale and hearty hens by the time they started laying.... and realized there was NO way my son and I could eat three eggs a day..... LOL.

MY dad saw the coop and roost and burst out laughing at how the hens had to delicately balance on that closet rod. He was the farmboy.... This was before internet and back yard chickens.

deb

 

[ShrekDawg]

Yes ma'am! Thank you. So deep litter is okay for hot weather? And where could I find wood chips we don't have any saw mills or anything around here. Benefits of small town living

Haha

No problem! And I'm not in a particularly hot climate but I assume it would work!! For the wood chips, fo you have a dump or transfer station? Ours has piles of stuff. Or perhaps a tree company? Often they give them away for free. You could always rent a chipper too and chip your own trees but that's kind of expensive I think. Or a landscape place

As for the depth mentioned, maybe they mean in the coop? But i just use pine shavings for my coop. For the run I was told 6 inches (3 inches of wood chips and 3 inches of leaves and stuff) but not sure.

 

[timothyyoung]

Temperature question. How warm is too warm in my coop? 5 1ish week old chicks and 2 2ish week old ducklings? With the heat lamp on it approaches 100 deg in the coop during the day. Without the heat lamp it stays about 80-85. What temp should I be trying to keep it around?

 

[Spartan22]

Temperature question. How warm is too warm in my coop? 5 1ish week old chicks and 2 2ish week old ducklings? With the heat lamp on it approaches 100 deg in the coop during the day. Without the heat lamp it stays about 80-85. What temp should I be trying to keep it around?

I've got 2 week old chicks, 80-85 deg is good without heat lamps. I also have 6 wk olds that I keep on 70s temp.

 

[Chicken Egg 17]

I would try 75-80 as to what I was told that 100 degrees is to much

 

[bruceha2000]

At least I'm not alone in my struggle on flooring. I want to use a dirt floor that I can do the deep litter technique but my husband wants it raised about a foot off the ground and to use hardware cloth!!! Is he nuts?! I would have to clean that out with the hose all the time and it would be very hard to clean under. Not to mention the possibility of birds getting toes caught or rats biting young toes.

Nope!!! No cloth on the bottom. I'll go with a wood floor and pine shavings before I let him do that!!!

Hardware cloth for a coop bottom will be nothing more than a poopy PITA. As you already recognize, you don't want to make a mud puddle under the coop every day and have water spraying all over the walls. You won't be able to get the poop off the wire without either scraping it out or nearly pressure washing to force it through 1/2 openings. I have 16 chickens and not one of them makes 1/2" poop. Think more like 1"+ and they aren't going to "aim" so likely as not it will be sticking to the wire even if you have larger openings.

Quote:
There is REAL deep litter and there is "deep bedding". Deep litter, as mentioned, is a compost pile that breaks down if managed properly and that includes keeping it with the proper amount of moisture and materials. Deep bedding is just something like pine shavings only several inches deep. It doesn't really break down but will dry out the poop. If these people's coops stunk there are some possibilities:
1) too many chickens for the square footage of bedding. It can only deal with so much. I rake the poop and shavings in my coop every morning.
2) not enough ventilation - the best way to kill your chickens in the winter in cold climates or in the summer in hot climates.
3) they weren't using true deep litter.

Temperature question. How warm is too warm in my coop? 5 1ish week old chicks and 2 2ish week old ducklings? With the heat lamp on it approaches 100 deg in the coop during the day. Without the heat lamp it stays about 80-85. What temp should I be trying to keep it around?

100 is too hot for any of those birds. If you are doing the heat lamp thing, the "usual" temperature starts at 90-95F the first week, dropping 5F each week until they are fully feathered at 4 weeks. At that point they need no supplemental heat. Thus at 80-85F ambient, you really shouldn't need to heat more than a couple of weeks. But let the birds tell you. They will go under the heat if they are cold and stay away from it otherwise. The food and water should be as far from the heat as possible so they don't have to be in the heat when they don't want to be.

 

[Latestarter]

And on another note @timothyyoung PLEASE be careful with a heat lamp inside a coop! That is one MAJOR fire hazard! If you doubt that, I'm sure @TJordan will be most (UN)happy to tell you what recently happened to her coop (and chicks) because of a heat lamp.

 

[timothyyoung]

And on another note @timothyyoung
PLEASE be careful with a heat lamp inside a coop! That is one MAJOR fire hazard! If you doubt that, I'm sure @TJordan
will be most (UN)happy to tell you what recently happened to her coop (and chicks) because of a heat lamp.

I know how that goes, I worked many a fire started by heat lamps before I retired from the fire service. It is monitored closely and secured in multiple different ways as to not be able to contact flammable surfaces.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
Of course you know dust and dander are flammable as well.... just for the others out there who are reading.....

even metal is flammable especially aluminuim in dust form.

deb

 

[MeepBeep]

 

And on another note @timothyyoung


PLEASE be careful with a heat lamp inside a coop! That is one MAJOR fire hazard! If you doubt that, I'm sure @TJordan


will be most (UN)happy to tell you what recently happened to her coop (and chicks) because of a heat lamp.

I know how that goes, I worked many a fire started by heat lamps before I retired from the fire service. It is monitored closely and secured in multiple different ways as to not be able to contact flammable surfaces.

Of course you know dust and dander are flammable as well....  just for the others out there who are reading.....

even metal is flammable especially aluminuim in dust form.

deb

As well as feathers, honestly the feathers scare me the most as there are times the coop looks like a pillow fight happened, and I know they were airborne and floating all over the coop,..