Question about chicken arks and insulation in cold New England climate

[swmalone]

nuchickontheblock has gone through a lot of the problems I am expecting to experience this winter. Since I only have three hens I don't actually use the second egg box as an egg box. This spring when I first moved the chicks out I placed a 100 watt bulb in that section as well as a small waterer and feeding. I may do something similar this winter. I have some pictures as we were building the coop and I might have some of the interior now. I will see what I can find and get them uploaded in the next couple of days. I have a buff orpington, a black australorp, and a black sex link, and I hope they are all hens. This set up is pretty easy to move if you have two people, you can see the handles built onto the sides. As nuchick mentioned the sides can be taken completely off as well as the nest box doors and the run doors on each end. The ramp is right in the middle of the coop, so when the ramp is down the interior of the coop is very small because it is basically 8'x2' but there are two partitions for egg boxes that knock it down to about 6'x2' and then if you take out the ramp it is about 3'x1' or so. I think they end up with about 8 square feet, but it is cramped because the roof goes to that peak. I just want to give you as much info as I can about the design so you make an informed decision.

 

[swmalone]

Ok, here are a couple of pictures for you. The chickens are much larger than that now, so you can see that it isn't really set up to give them a lot of room inside the coop. I rigged up a cheapy pvc run extension that I use to give them more area to run around outside.

 

[MountHolyoke]

Thank you all so much! There is much that I hadn't thought of, including unintended setbacks to the design in general in terms of winter maintenance and overall size and cramped-ness in the snowy months, when chickens are reluctant to walk on snow/ice (which I have heard from many others, as well). I am still going to look into designing a modified ark with slightly more space (broader, perhaps, with more floor-to-slanted-ceiling space ratio in the actual coop?) and a heated waterer, but am starting to think about other designs as well despite how much I love the look of the ark. I will go, in the end, with the design that I think fits best for the space I have available and the needs of the chickens...even if the ark is beautiful!

 

[swmalone]

I am trying to find more space in my cramped yard so I can build something a bit more traditional and permanent to go with the ark.

 

[zookeeper15133]

I live near Pittsburgh, the climate sounds about the same as MA. Go to my page and see my Ark. It is larger than what you need but you could go half as long. The snow itself acts as insulation. (During the blizzard a couple years ago we didn't have power for 10 days, but we had 2 feet of snow on the roof. I heated my whole house with 2 25000BTU kerosene heaters to 75 degrees. It was warmer in here than if I had the furnace on. After about a week, when the snow started to melt, it got cooler, 68 degrees.)

If you insulate, then you run into condensation problems. If you really want insulation, put the rigid panels under the panels with a piece of luan on the inside.

What I will do this year is to put some kind of cover on the wire on the run to keep the snow out. Maybe a roll up canvas or 1/2 sheet plywood, just to keep the snow out of the run.

 

[nuchickontheblock]

In evaluating space, we built our new coop with the same size footprint as the tractor ark style we had last year (5 x 6), but having straight walls means it has people head room, windows, a door, shelving, a couple of roosting areas, etc. The difference in usable space is amazing. Because we lost the pen area underneath, we have attached a small covered run that is also about 5 x 6 for the bad weather. We always used to move the tractor back and forth a few feet one way or the other each week, which meant we had quite a bit of yard as dedicated "chicken area" that was dug up/ wood chips, etc,; so we actually seem to be using a smaller portion of our yard now that the coop/run set up is stationary.

If I can figure out how to post pics, I'll try to do that this weekend.

Paula