Good morning All. I'm starting to plan the layout of my coop. I'm trying to figure out what is the best proximity of the nesting boxes to the roosts. My coop is a good 9 feet X 12 feet or so. Is it important to not have the roosts too far away from the nesting boxes, or doesn't it really matter? My coop is rather large, and the way that it is laid out, I was thinking about putting the nesting boxes on the one 9foot side and the roosts on the opposite 9 foot side. My coop is built odd in that I have about a 5 foot opening in the center of the 12 foot wall on the one side. The other 12 foot side is going to be opened with a hole for them to go out into a fenced yard area. Sorry to be so specific with the numbers. Don't mean to confuse anyone. Thanks for any advice!
I can't think of any reason that the nest boxes would need to be near the roosts. I would make sure that the roosts are higher up than the nest boxes, because they tend to sleep in the highest spot available. You don't want chicken waste building up in the nest box! Ha e fun with your new coop!
Thanks for the reply, friend. I was hoping that it wouldn't really matter. And yes, I'll be very sure to position those roosts so I don't have a mess in my nesting boxes.
one thing that I wished I had thought of when I had my last coop (building a new one now) - I'd like the girls to be able to walk to the nest boxes without having to walk through a poopy area. In my last coop, they had to walk past the roosting area, and unless the coop was just cleaned - they walked thru poop.
