Roost design & location / Coop design

[kuntrychick]

I have seen SO many pictures of roosts & there's so many great ideas on here. I am so undecided as to what kind of roosts I want hubby to put in the new coop. I really love the natural wood limbs/branches but also like many of the ladder type roosts. The coop is gonna be 6x8 & so far what we've decided is to have it facing the East with the little chicken door in the center & 2 windows, another window on the South, another window on the North side. Nest boxes on the west wall (no window) that opens from the outside.

I'm thinking of having the ladder type roosts on the north side & then maybe some extra roosts here & there of the natural limbs/branches that way I can have both...lol & see what my chickens prefer.

I wasn't sure what is easier or people's (or chickens) preferences here that have had both & dealt with chickens a long time. I'm sure there's many opinions pros & cons of each but would like some ideas.

I still haven't decided about a poop board or a poop door. I know the poop door sure sounds handy but was gonna make the regular people door wide enough to fit a wheelbarrow for when I clean out the Deep Litter anyway. I HATE cold weather...can not tolerate it, so can't see myself going out there & scraping or hosing off a poop board in the winter (as someone else mentioned in one of my other posts).

Opinions?

 

[wava1vaughn]

Hi from Ga. I have an idea try them all. The chickens might enjoy the variety.

 

[fireguy56]

Hi, Unless you want a real mess on the floor under the roosts(chickens poopalot when sleeping on roost) I would suggest catching it some how(poop board, tray, hammock) To me it is much easier to clean at waist height than cleaning the floor. As far as cleaning coop out totally...if ya build a people door, have it swing out...put a 1" x 6" across the inside of the door to keep shavings in, but make it removable for cleaning. Then simply lay a tarp on the ground outside the door and shovel/sweep the old shavings onto the tarp for dragging/loading onto wheel barrow. No need to bring wheel barrow into coop.
In our main coop I used a poop tray setup. Check out my page to see. Good luck.
Erik

 

[wyododge]

We don't have a poop board, we have 26 large breed and use the deep litter method with DE and pine shavings ( 9x8 coop ). We just mix it up with a hay fork, and do a full clean out in spring, after corn, taters and maters are about 12" high, and then just before winter. My mother always had a poop board, and it seem like a pain to me, I just stir up the litter, and add to it every few weeks. We had the round landscape timbers with the flat spots on them, but did not have enough. We really did not want to buy anything so we switched out to branches. One nice thing about how we have our branches now is they form a 'U' so the birds can walk around 3/4 of the coop. I really don't think they care about the material, I suppose they would not appreciate steel bars, they just want to get up in the air and go to sleep.

Long story short, I would use what is cheap, and makes you happy. You are the one who has to look at it, and show it off. As long as your chickens have not learned how to paint, there will not be any picket lines, at least not ones with signs...

We chose a sliding door but our coop is inside a barn so we had a restriction on space for the swing of the door. We don't have a poop door, pop door or anything like that. Cleaning three times or maybe four at the most, is really not enough to get us all worked up. Took us an hour the other day, but we were goofing off too.

You can see our coop on our page thingy.