Roost - room to get down? Poop board - how much head space?

[PDXcluck]

Unfortunately I did not spend enough time on BYC before starting to build my coop, otherwise I would have seen that nearly everyone says "wish I would have made it bigger"!

I have a 3x4 hen house with a 4x10 covered run for 4 hens. Two of which are big hens, brahma's. If I had known then what I know now, it would be a 4x5 or 5x5 coop, if for no other reason than getting food, water, roost, and a poop board in there. The nest boxes are external so that makes it at least possible to get it all in. Anyways, on to my question.

For simplification, picture:




The nest boxes are mounted on the outside on the right side of the picture (covered with a piece of plywood for now). When placing the roost and poop board I tried to give as much headroom from the roost to ceiling and from poop board to floor as possible, as it stands now there is 18" from the bottom of the poop board to the floor, and about the same from the roost to the ceiling (18" to roof sheathing, 14.5" to rafters). The roost is only about 2 inches above the poop board, but I figured that since the border lip of the poop board is 3/4" wide that they will prefer to roost on the branch (which is about 2 - 2.5 inches diameter). I plan on putting a feeder under the poop board which is why I want to maintain 18" from the board to the floor.

My biggest concern is for those big birds, when full grown, to be able to get up and down off that roost easily. I am assuming they will use the poop board as a step up to get to the roost, and from the floor to the front edge of the poop board is about 20 inches. Which I think is fine, however, there is only about 16 inches from the front of the poop board to the wall studs on the right of the picture. I am thinking that if they figure out they can jump/fly off at an angle (either towards the 'back' of the picture, or towards the door) that they will have plenty of room to get up and down. But what do you think?

What do you see as potential problems with this? Don't be shy either, but please don't just say "you should have made it bigger", because I already know that and it is too late now!

Thanks for looking...

 

[BillinPA]

It's tight. Can you move the roost to the left in the pic? Maybe shorten the poop board. ( to the left). I think in your case I'd just remove the poop board. I would worry more about them getting down and face planting into the wall then getting up on it. It wouldn't be that much more work or expense to just partial clean that side of the coop a little more often and ditch the poop board. Would open it up a little more. Just my 2cents

 

[PDXcluck]

I could shorten the poop board up a bit, especially if they all roost facing out, then it would only need to come out to the roost. I could do this, as the feeder underneath would still be protected. It would catch most of the poop and with a coop this small and four hens it likely won't make a huge difference in terms of clean out.

I don't think i can move the roost "left" though. It is already only about 12 inches to the wall and 9 inches to the studs. Which I think is about minimum already?

Thanks for your thoughts!


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