Sort of remodeling my coop? Need input.

[sarahconnor]

So this coop is currently housing 11 chickens and 8 ducks and has been for about 2 years now. And the ventilation isn't very good. I did not build this coop, and it was originally made in town for four hens.
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I am here trying to make it work until I can find a better way to house my flock. It has been great at keeping predators out, but some snow can get in from certain spots which will be shown. I need advise, or suggestions and even other opinions besides my own. Now I am going to stop talking and post the pictures of the coop.
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The pictures below are of the back of the coop and is the lower ventilation, I took the covering off today and cleared all the debris out of it too help improve ventilation until I can make more ventilation else ware.
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The pictures below are of the front upper ventilation, I took this one's cover off as well and made sure it was not covered in debris which it wasn't.
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So in the picture above and below are the nesting boxes, the door let's snow get in on really windy snowing nights.
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Above is the "human door" entrance and this picture is to show what material is protecting the wooden floor, which needs to be replaced with something better.

So in picture number five there was a metal thing that was not needed anymore so I took it out today as you can see in the photo below.
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The pictures below are the chickens door, it also lets some snow in sometimes at night I believe.
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This is how much light gets in from the chickens door.
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The black rubber stuff was stapled in but all the staples came out of the wood so I extracted them from the black rubber thing
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View of the coop from back vent.
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The boards have warped and I thought this was something worth taking a picture of, it doesn't let snow or anything get directly into the coop. I don't know why we didn't stain the coop or paint it when we first got it.
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The photos below are the bottom of the nesting box's, which the older hens like to sleep in. And the coop is on four cinder blocks.
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Outside of the spot where snow gets into the nesting box's
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These pictures are of the ventilation with the covers back on.
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Please feel free to ask as many questions as you want on what I have been doing for the coop and for the chickens and ducks. And what I plan on doing to improve their lives. I want the older chickens and ducks to have a good last few years however many that may be and all the younger ones a good rest of their lives. I hope I made sense of everything, if not please do let me know.

I’m amazed at how tiny that space is. Hope the new coop turned out good.
Also amazed you have birds left. We have eagles, hawks, foxes,coyotes and raccoons. I would have zero birds after a month, however we used to let them range 6 hours per day but it seems now I’ll lose one per week if I did that. Might have lost one every 6 weeks 10 years ago. . Mine sadly can only range while I watch them.

 

[AngelinaThePekin8]

I’m amazed at how tiny that space is. Hope the new coop turned out good.
Also amazed you have birds left. We have eagles, hawks, foxes,coyotes and raccoons. I would have zero birds after a month, however we used to let them range 6 hours per day but it seems now I’ll lose one per week if I did that. Might have lost one every 6 weeks 10 years ago. . Mine sadly can only range while I watch them.

Thee was one time in the small coop, when we had a bigger pallet coop (poorly made but worked as shelter) where we lost two hens in the small coop to a skunk they didn't have heads but everyone else was unscathed. Then about a year or two later a swift fox attemptemped about three times to get my ducks who in the pallet coop slept on the icy ground, first time was at dawn when the ducks were still outside the pallet coop it put a hole in my younger pekin ducks bill, with the same setup we had when the skunk happened the swift fox came back a few days later and injured the same duck again just barely scraped her neck and it barely got my khaki Campbell we found her on the other side of the garage scared and holding her wing a bit weird but no bleeding I think we even scared the fox that time but thought it was cat at first.
After that attack I waited for the birds to make noise at 12:00 am probably and ran out when at the sound of it trying to get the ducks and yelled at the fox and kicked the coop a little to scare it out, it ran out through a pallet slat and my dad came out and scared it with a shotgun after we tried finding it that night but couldn't I think we did hit it. But I think their protected species here so after we found out it was swift fox we didn't attempt hurting. We even caught the fox which seemed to be a nursing momma fox, when we released her we followed her to a den which I think was empty (based on research they lead things to their spare dens to keep them away from their kits or something). And then nothing happened after that, I started locking the chickens and ducks up at night and tore down the pallet coop in warmer weather. All the ducks were okay they healed up fine, and since we had two broody ducks outside of the coop this year I thought it safer to let the door stay open and won't lock them up until the ducklings are just a little bigger and until the other coop is ready. The ducks don't really to in the coop when given the opportunity but the chickens to in every night at a certain time the ducks to in occasionally at night. No predation even when we could see swift foxes all over the fields around our neighborhood. There's lots of barking dogs and cats probably help keep things away and I'm nearly always home or somebody is so we'd be able to stop something pretty fast if it were to happen.

The pallet coop was just some un modified free pallets that we screwed together put some chicken feed bags over and some clear plastic as shelter from the cold wind of winter and rain and things. It was our second coop like this, the first one was not so close to our house and in that one we had a few losses to a skunk and it killed one hen and our aggressive rooster who was found hardly touched in the field behind our house this was when we had two geese as well and only three ducks and lots of chickens. We caught lots of skunks getting into trouble and my dad for chased by one once when letting it go to try dispatching it. We've relocated a skunk before to the back of my dad's truck smelled for awhile.

The biggest attack happened when a neighbor who basically just moved in lost their coon hound and it came and killed about 10 it seemed of our chickens and injured my pekin duck who quietly passed away on the 29 this month what saved her that day about 5 years ago was her falling in a window well she had a bite wound but it healed and the dog was taken control of the owners wanted to get us replacements for the chickens we lost but my parents said no for whatever reason.

That was long anyway I hope we don't get any more losses for a long time these last two three years it's been only age that's taken our birds.

Have a good day and I will get photos of the coop today show what it looks like now.

 

[AngelinaThePekin8]

I wonder if their raised outside and let to free range from the start even at night if that would help survivability cause they'll possibly have a better understanding of how to survive out there and avoid certain things. That's basically what I did although I always thought it normal for them to free range and not really be closed up at night.

 

[AngelinaThePekin8]

I took these yesterday.

This is what it looks like now that it was cleaned with the mold armor stuff.

 

[AngelinaThePekin8]

Haven't updated this in a while.

We got the coop ready for the chickens right before last winter iirc. The chickens have been using it, had to bring them back there to the coop during the winter as they wouldn't do it themselves. During super cold winter days the chickens wouldn't leave the coop. Hardly any frostbite.

The coop needs more ventilation then it has. I just don't quite know where we would put it.

I also need to set the roost back up. But I want to make it different and just haven't gotten around to doing so. The chickens are all fine with roosting on the nest box ledges for now tho.

I will get some pictures of the coop when I can.

 

[AngelinaThePekin8]

Here some pictures of the coop. It needs a cleaning for sure, been waiting for more good shavings that aren't super dusty which we have again.

My sweet old girl Martha, showing us there's no fence there. Pecking around for bugs and what ever else.

I am unsure of how to do the roost, I want it to be space efficient and not cause problems with hens hopping out of nest boxes. The guinea fowl are destructive with the lowes house wrap. I need more ventilation on this as well, only three gable vents on this as of now.
I forgot to get pictures of the nest box doors being open, oh well.