We built our original coop space in March. basically walls with a human door and a chicken door. As the chicks grewup we added nesting boxes(storage totes turned sideways) and roosts, opened up one wall making it into a "southern sleeping porch style coop". Over the summer we have been battling the problem of the girls roosting in the nesting boxes...errrr......we were spending alot of time cleaning out nesting boxes and washing poopy eggs! With the weather getting colder we spent a weekend working on the coop. We covered "the porch window" with plastic leaving a tiny gap on the top next to the roof for ventilation. We tore out the roosts and redesigned the nesting box frame. For the new roost we recycled an old wooden ladder, when its time to clean we fold it up out of the way.We layed a tarp on the floor under the ladder then scatter pine shavings on the floor, after moving the ladder we just sweep everything from the floor onto the tarp and drag it out to dump it on the compost heap! Soooo much easier! With the nesting box frame redesigned we were able to use a staple gun and cover the whole thing in curtian material. Tonight we noticed when we went to lock up the coop, all the girls were on the ladder and no one was roosting in the boxes, but we did find some CLEAN eggs in the nests! WooHoo!!
The Old design (Summer Porch) The New Design (winterized)
The View from the outside
The white wall is actually the wall with the human door to the enclosed part of the coop. The "summer porch window" opens out into the covered porch to the left of the white wall. The covered porch is where their feeding bucket hangs and their waterer is sitting. they have a fully wire covered run which is about twice the size of their coop. My daughter left a white lawn chair in there one day while she was "training" her chickens, and well......they have taken over that chair as their outdoor roost! The next planned upgrade will hopefully be coverting my kids old trampoline into a brooder cage , with a brooder box built onto the side. We're planning on dragging the trampoline over beside the chicken run this winter so the girls can get used to it being there and it won't be too traumatic when we add the brooder box and chicken wire and of course baby chicks!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sylvester017
Nice roomy setup. Do your chickens free-range the yard? Not only do we have an Adirondack cedar rocker in the yard as a perch, but we have set up 3 planks on cinderblocks around the yard, a pop-up canopy, 2 large doghouses, an old wheelbarrow, and some stickery rose bushes for our girls to hide/snooze under during the day. We plan to add a curved Japanese decorative bridge as another structure for them to snooze/hide under. When the Cooper's Hawk pays a visit our hens all dive for the nearest cover without having to run clear across the yard to get to the coop.
Well, speaking of Cooper's Hawk, we had one visit our backyard patio this morning sitting right outside our sliding glass doors. Our hens were under the shelter where they were drinking water and suddenly two of them dived into the small doghouse next to the shelter and one jumped into the coop. We often get Cooper's Hawk visits and having numerous shelters in the yard has been the hen's rescue havens - they don't have to run across the yard to get to the coop for cover! So far the doghouses have been the hens' favourite hiding places. I might invest in a third house!
