Raised coop vs. groundlevel coop?

[henless]

Kudos to you for wanting to build before getting your chicks! So many get chicks first, then build. It's much harder and way more stressful that way. I started my build first. I started in November and was still pushing it when I got my babies in late February.

I prefer a walk in coop. I'm not old (is 52 old?), but I do have RA which makes it very hard to bend/get around at times. I would rather be able to get in the coop and interact with my chickens. It's much easier in a walk in.

Since your wanting to do deep litter, dirt floor is better, but it can be done with other flooring. Just be sure to put some kind of protection on the floor. Either vinyl or Blackjack 57. It's a roof coating you can get at Lowe's.

Use 1/2" hardware cloth for all openings. Attach it with screws & washers. Also be sure and either put an apron or else dig down and bury welded wire into the ground. Eighteen inches to 2' should be enough. This prevents predators from digging into your coop.

Make sure you have plenty of ventilation. The Southern heat will do your chickens more harm than our milder winters. My coops & runs are all hardware cloth. I put up tarps/clear plastic for wind block in the winter. They do fine.

Build you coop/run bigger than you plan, or as big as you can. Chicken math will hit. Sooner or later!

If you can, cover at least half of your run if not all of it. The summer heat during the middle of the day will make your run almost unusable. Even with shade trees, your going to have that 10-2 window when you have straight overhead sun. It will also give them room to get out in bad weather. I put tin over part of mine, hardware over the rest.

Don't worry if you don't get it perfect the first time. I had my coop for a year, and decided to redo it. I just finished stage 2 of my redo (haven't got it posted yet) and have more to do. Looking at my pen yesterday, I released I put one of my doors in the wrong place. I will be changing it in the future to make it easier for me. Live and learn, LOL.

 

[donrae]

I've always had walk-in coops on dirt floors, and hope I always will. I live in the PNW and my run isn't covered, so if I want to chill with the birds when it's raining, I have to be in the coop. I can hang out in there and see who is laying, who is running others off from the nest boxes, etc. When I need to catch birds, I walk into the coop at night and pick them up, no gymnastic contortions involved. When I have a broody hen, she's got the floor of the coop to raise her brood on, no fretting about chicks getting up a ramp. I can open the door and pop my head in and easily visualize the entire coop. Yes, the larger size means there's more bulk material on the floor to clean out, but the flip side is the larger size allows for good deep liter and I only clean out the entire thing once a year or so. Cleaning also doesn't involve contortions, it's just rake and shovel. Were I building my walk-in coop (mine is a repurposed greenhouse) I would be sure to make the doorway wide enough for a wheelbarrow!

 

[Blooie]

Amen to the wheelbarrow sized door, Rachel! I wish I'd done that on both the coop and the run, and since we even built the doors ourselves there was absolutely no reason we couldn't have sized them accordingly - um, 'cept for we didn't think of it at the time.