Producers Pride Sentinel Coop MDC 001

[JacinLarkwell]

It's the brown one that you're asking about, right?

I like mine. I have 2 built, another waiting to be built and I might get one more next year.

There is absolutely no ventilation if you shut the coop door at night. Other than that and the obvious size compared to claimed number of birds it can hold, I love them. Much more than the grey coop in the picture. I only keep a trio or 4 birds though for standards max, and they're calmer, nicer temperament birds

 

[Jayroev]

We have two of those coops, hooked together at the ends of the runs to create an "L" shaped larger run. We have 7 hens (3 RIR and 4 BR), so 3 roost in one coop, and 4 in the other. 5 can fit on one roost, but it is a tight squeeze. As it is for the 4, and I make sure that it's four that like each other, otherwise there is a small amount of pecking and squabbling. The two mean girls and one friend overnight in the other coop, and even then there is some squabbling. We put remote control battery operated lights inside, so once they're all in, I turn the lights off and then everyone is quiet and nice.

I was surprised at the sturdiness of these coops. We had a couple of pretty good wind storms with 50 mph gusts and a good amount of rain, and I thought for sure the coops would be flattened or blown apart, or leaky. But everyone stayed warm, dry, and secure.

Our coop is inside a small fenced yard that is between our house and our pasture, which is nice because we have an electric fence for the horses on the pasture side. (No critters are going to access our yard from the pasture without hitting that hotwire.) Our hens are allowed to roam the yard during the day. I wouldn't keep 4 hens locked in this coop/run all day every day, I think it is too small for that. We do let them "free range" outside the yard if we're outside with them, and we lock them in the coop/run if we are going to be away from home and not return until after dark. It's been secure and safe.

For ventilation, we bought some 6" vents, drilled two 1" holes below the peak of the roof, and covered the holes with the vents. It's easy enough to remove the vents to add more holes...I'm thinking we'll add two more holes under each vent as it gets warmer.

I rarely bother with the slide out trays anymore. I do wish they were deeper. I use a good amount of pine shavings for bedding, and it makes it difficult to slide the tray out without all the shavings being pushed out to the run below.

I don't regret buying these coops at all, and they are working for us in our situation. But I have been thinking about adding a rooster to our group, and I won't do it unless and until we get a larger coop set up. Even though our girls are allowed outside during the day, I still feel like we are pushing the limit on size.

**EDIT** The roosting bars are way too small for full grown hens. We had to modify them.

 

[Jayroev]

We have two of those coops, hooked together at the ends of the runs to create an "L" shaped larger run. We have 7 hens (3 RIR and 4 BR), so 3 roost in one coop, and 4 in the other. 5 can fit on one roost, but it is a tight squeeze. As it is for the 4, and I make sure that it's four that like each other, otherwise there is a small amount of pecking and squabbling. The two mean girls and one friend overnight in the other coop, and even then there is some squabbling. We put remote control battery operated lights inside, so once they're all in, I turn the lights off and then everyone is quiet and nice.

I was surprised at the sturdiness of these coops. We had a couple of pretty good wind storms with 50 mph gusts and a good amount of rain, and I thought for sure the coops would be flattened or blown apart, or leaky. But everyone stayed warm, dry, and secure.

Our coop is inside a small fenced yard that is between our house and our pasture, which is nice because we have an electric fence for the horses on the pasture side. (No critters are going to access our yard from the pasture without hitting that hotwire.) Our hens are allowed to roam the yard during the day. I wouldn't keep 4 hens locked in this coop/run all day every day, I think it is too small for that. We do let them "free range" outside the yard if we're outside with them, and we lock them in the coop/run if we are going to be away from home and not return until after dark. It's been secure and safe.

For ventilation, we bought some 6" vents, drilled two 1" holes below the peak of the roof, and covered the holes with the vents. It's easy enough to remove the vents to add more holes...I'm thinking we'll add two more holes under each vent as it gets warmer.

I rarely bother with the slide out trays anymore. I do wish they were deeper. I use a good amount of pine shavings for bedding, and it makes it difficult to slide the tray out without all the shavings being pushed out to the run below.

I don't regret buying these coops at all, and they are working for us in our situation. But I have been thinking about adding a rooster to our group, and I won't do it unless and until we get a larger coop set up. Even though our girls are allowed outside during the day, I still feel like we are pushing the limit on size.

**EDIT** The roosting bars are way too small for full grown hens. We had to modify them.

Can you please tell me what you did to modify the roost?

 

[linguini]

We bought this coop before we acquired our chicks and before we learned about BYC forum. The coop is sturdy, ok as a starter for the first few months, but there are several problems, all can be fixed with modification:

1. no ventilation, you'll need to keep the door open all the time. In summer, we leave both side doors open covered with hardware cloth screen for ventilation.
2. leaks - the nesting boxes get wet. The vinyl that connects main chamber and nesting boxes is too narrow. You can use a wider, heavier vinyl to cover from under the overhang of the main chamber to the top of the nesting box roof.

Additional modification:
- boarded up one side of the sentinal coup (to the left of the door) permanantly, and built a platform to extend the main chamber. (double the floor size).
- In winter, we board up sides under the nesting box and under the main chamber so the chooks has a warm spot to hang out if they choose to.

We also connected the coop to an 8x8x8 cubical run. When the chooks got bigger (3 months) we purchased another bigger coop and connected to the entire construct.

We ended up with 8 chickens - they figure out which coop they like better themselves! Most of the time 1-3 chickens sleep in the sentinal coop while the rest of them prefer the bigger coop. But they all like to hang out under the sentinal coop for some reason, especially on drafty cold days. It's also their safe house whenever hawks flew by or when they hear loud noise.

Outside of their "compound", there is also a 30'x60' or so fenced-in yard they can roam around during the day.

 

[kkcowgirl]

Can you please tell me what you did to modify the roost?

Very cheaply done, but it worked. We had some wooden railing pieces laying around from a deck replacement we had done. We cut them the length of the existing roost bars and zip-tied them to the top of them, and then slid the original roost bars back in place. We wrapped the ends of the original roost bars with masking tape to snug them up so they wouldn't rock, and that's been working ever since.

While our hens have long since outgrown those little coops and have moved into a much larger one, two of our girls have recently decided to take up residence again while they go through their molt, and our "rednecked" modification still works.

 

[linguini]

I just bought this coop for my first two chickens and 1. they won’t roost on the bar and 2. I am realizing the run is way too small. My chickens can be in the back yard 2-3 hours a day but they need a larger run for when they can’t be out. Any ideas about how to expand this run, or suggestions about a good pre fab run that we could attach?

Since you have only two chickens, you don't need a big extended run, but do consider that they'll need a place to hangout in winter if you have snow in your area.

We bought this coop before we bought the chicks, and 6 months before I found BYC forum. Built a cube extension as chicken run, before we moved the chicks into the coop.
The cube is connected to the end of the Sentinal coop, we leave the coop door open all year round, close the cube door daily. (hardware cloth apron around the entire construct)

The 8x8x8 cube run seemed great in the beginning, but many rooky chooks' parents error:

1. no roof, the ground became a muddy mess after rain
2. securely wrapped cube (with chicken wire and hardware cloth) made it difficult to add a roof later with such a tall structure, we have to use tarp to make an internal roof.
3. Bought too many chicks when we went shopping at the local farm. The farm told us that it's a state rule that they have to sell at least 6 chickens to those who do not have an existing flock. (and who can resist those cute chicks???)

As soon as we moved our 6-weeks old chickens into the coop with the cubical run, we realized the coop was way too small (we were raising some baby chicks for our friend, ended up keeping all of them, we ended up with 8 chickens in all). They did not sleep on the roosting bar in the beginning, slept on top of each other instead.

Here is a sequence of evolution of our "chicken complex". It all started with the Sentinal coop. Did all of these BEFORE I found the BYC forum, everything was a hack, trying to mitigate the previous errors:

-built an extended platform to double the living space, add additional roosting bar.
-added an extended run, (covered with bird net to keep the hawks out), and
-bought a second housing unit

Moral of the story : Read the BYC forum first before you raise any chicks, learn from the experts, and stick to their advice.

The second prefab was so flimsy, I was afraid to sneeze when we were putting it together, for fear of breaking the thin wood.) In the end, it all worked out - I was able to use the additional mesh panels that were intended for a small run as window panels in the summer for both coops for ventilation. In summer, I replaced the entire end of the second coop with mesh panels, kept both side doors of the Sentinal coop open and covered the mesh panels, and made some overhangs to keep the occasional rain out).

See pictures below.