post your chicken coop pictures here!

[MeepBeep]

thank you for the info on the vents, when you say low vent holes under the nesting box, how large of holes should I make and how many
thank you Jack

You really can't have too much ventilation as long as there is no breeze in the coop, a good reference point is 1 sqft of total vent per bird...

 

[Sylvester017]

I have added an overhang above the coop door at the top of the ramp to keep the weather out. We've had some pretty good rains the past week and the coop bedding is staying dry.

I let the hens out to check out the raised garden beds for the first time. They were out for about an hour, it's really entertaining to watch them chase bugs and scratch. They started to do some good work in the gardens cleaning up.

I don't know how you open the egg box without getting rain drips in it. We had to use a tarp cover and a pop-up canopy during rain to keep out dribbles when the nestbox was opened. Yes, hens love wet ground to scratch in. When harvest is over our hens love to scratch and peck in the garden bed dirt.

 

[Flock In Texas]

I don't know how you open the egg box without getting rain drips in it. We had to use a tarp cover and a pop-up canopy during rain to keep out dribbles when the nestbox was opened. Yes, hens love wet ground to scratch in. When harvest is over our hens love to scratch and peck in the garden bed dirt.

I have had the same concern. I'm building a large tractor and I will have overhangs, but 8-9 months of the year, I will have a hardware cloth front door. I'm still under construction, but here is what I am planning. My tractor will be over 6 feet tall and vulnerable to high winds. I will need to secure it with guy wires. On the front side with the open door I plan to attach a tarp to the guy wires for shade and weather protection. I am mounting eye bolts at each corner under the overhang. It'll be a month or more before I finish the tractor and show off pictures of the tractor and the guy wire shade/weather tarp. I can attach the tarp to any side and get under it to get eggs or whatever.

Here is where I am at so far.

 

[Sylvester017]

I have had the same concern. I'm building a large tractor and I will have overhangs, but 8-9 months of the year, I will have a hardware cloth front door. I'm still under construction, but here is what I am planning. My tractor will be over 6 feet tall and vulnerable to high winds. I will need to secure it with guy wires. On the front side with the open door I plan to attach a tarp to the guy wires for shade and weather protection. I am mounting eye bolts at each corner under the overhang. It'll be a month or more before I finish the tractor and show off pictures of the tractor and the guy wire shade/weather tarp. I can attach the tarp to any side and get under it to get eggs or whatever.

Here is where I am at so far.

You will love wheels. That was our mistake with our first coop - no portability. Also, the flat top invited rain pools on our roof which invited leaks - it should've been pitched. High winds are always a problem. We get Santa Ana winds up to 100mph gusts so we got a low 4x6x4 coop the first time - made out of cheap OSB flake board but we managed to keep it in decent condition protecting with tarps and/or canopy overhead.




Our 2nd coop is a taller Barn Coop (w/wheels this time) and we keep it in its own roofed patio. We've wheeled this heavy coop all around the yard during yard remodeling.

 

[MeepBeep]

I will need to secure it with guy wires.

May I suggest you instead get some 2-3 foot lengths of rebar and a few tubes of traction sand... You can then simply drill a few horizontal holes in the bottom board to slide in the rebar into then drop a tube of sand on the rebar outside the coop to hold it down...

 

[bruceha2000]

I have had the same concern. I'm building a large tractor and I will have overhangs, but 8-9 months of the year, I will have a hardware cloth front door. I'm still under construction, but here is what I am planning. My tractor will be over 6 feet tall and vulnerable to high winds. I will need to secure it with guy wires. On the front side with the open door I plan to attach a tarp to the guy wires for shade and weather protection. I am mounting eye bolts at each corner under the overhang. It'll be a month or more before I finish the tractor and show off pictures of the tractor and the guy wire shade/weather tarp. I can attach the tarp to any side and get under it to get eggs or whatever.

Here is where I am at so far.

Unless you plan to run your chickens on flat concrete or asphalt

, I suspect you will find those wheels MUCH too small for easy rolling. And not just the aspect of poor rolling on grass. If there is much of any unevenness in the ground, those long bottom pieces are going to hang up making moving it impossible other than dragging it with a garden tractor or the like. And if you need to do that, you might as well get rid of the wheels and put skids on the bottom.

 

[Flock Master64]

The floor of my run is either really muddy or to hard for the chickens to scratch around in. Any suggestions for what I should put in there?

 

[perchie.girl]

The floor of my run is either really muddy or to hard for the chickens to scratch around in. Any suggestions for what I should put in there?

Lots of people use plain old river sand built up about six inches with a wood border to keep it from migratiing out. Good Drainiage easy to keep clean and the muliple sized grains are good for grit as well as dust bathing.

deb

 

[Flock Master64]

Ok thanks, is it expensive and how do I clean out the run?

 

[chickluvinfreak]

Ok thanks, is it expensive and how do I clean out the run?

It can be expensive depending on how big your run is. But it is cheap compared to other beddings. You can usually buy bulk bags of sand at the hardware store. And it doesn't need replaced very often if at all. You can clean it out by zip tying wire to a pitchfork. Then you just use the fork to scoop areas of the run. Kind of like cleaning a cats litter box. The sand will fall through the wire but the poop will stay in the fork and you can throw it out. Here's a link that goes more in detail about using sand and a picture of the modified pitchfork. http://104homestead.com/sand-in-coop/