The Front Porch Swing

[Beekissed]

Maybe easier to just line the "egg drawer" box with some foam board insulation? I lined my nest boxes with thick cardboard and it seems to really keep birds and eggs cool in the summer and warm in the winter, so I'm thinking actual insulation board would work much better still and be less laborious and problematic than a water cooling system?

I saw a neato thing using water pipes for roosts in places like where you live...HOT...they had the water running through the roosting pipes to keep the chooks cool at night. How nice is that?

 

[Lacy Blues]

MY tunnel nest idea....

it will have to be built from scratch.... But its to allow me to collect eggs without opening the coop door. I use a walker to get about... So the eggs will be accessible from the same aisle that I feed and water from.



Drawn by hand in Pseudo Perspective.... Dont have a clock board. but the idea is to have a tunnel nest that happens to be a roll out nest as well. Then There will be a kitchen cabinet style drawer with "egg catchng material" to let the eggs slowly move down to the front of the nest. The deal is I have to build a prototype to make sure It will actually work. The box is three to four feet long and about one and half feet deep.

Because of the heat here I am even considering routing the water pipes underneath to cool the eggs If I am not able to collect one day.

deb

You might consider adding some ventilation holes along that top ridge and perhaps some on the shelf level as well. Nesting boxes get really hot. I use to have one similar to this in that it was a tunnel nest but I didn't have anything fancy like your pull out drawer. Until I added ventilation, my birds wouldn't use it.

 

[Lacy Blues]

Maybe easier to just line the "egg drawer" box with some foam board insulation? I lined my nest boxes with thick cardboard and it seems to really keep birds and eggs cool in the summer and warm in the winter, so I'm thinking actual insulation board would work much better still and be less laborious and problematic than a water cooling system?

I saw a neato thing using water pipes for roosts in places like where you live...HOT...they had the water running through the roosting pipes to keep the chooks cool at night. How nice is that?

I don't know about anybody else's birds but my birds would really tear up cardboard. They get in their wooden nests with floors and I can hear them scratching as they settle into the bedding to lay. They're not dust bathing, they're making a nice roundish impression.

 

[Searsmom]

MY tunnel nest idea....

it will have to be built from scratch.... But its to allow me to collect eggs without opening the coop door. I use a walker to get about... So the eggs will be accessible from the same aisle that I feed and water from.



Drawn by hand in Pseudo Perspective.... Dont have a clock board. but the idea is to have a tunnel nest that happens to be a roll out nest as well. Then There will be a kitchen cabinet style drawer with "egg catchng material" to let the eggs slowly move down to the front of the nest. The deal is I have to build a prototype to make sure It will actually work. The box is three to four feet long and about one and half feet deep.

Because of the heat here I am even considering routing the water pipes underneath to cool the eggs If I am not able to collect one day.

deb

Want to come build me a new chicken house? You just design/point and I'll do the work.

 

[Beekissed]

I don't know about anybody else's birds but my birds would really tear up cardboard. They get in their wooden nests with floors and I can hear them scratching as they settle into the bedding to lay. They're not dust bathing, they're making a nice roundish impression.

Yep...the floor of the nest box got scratched up quite a bit while all the other areas are still intact. A combination of their scratching and moisture coming in the cracks and settling in under the nesting materials caused significant deterioration of the cardboard right in the center but the rest is intact. Lasted a year and a half now, but will be replaced come spring coop tweak. Not bad for materials I would have thrown away anyway.

This time I may put down the cardboard floor and cover that with a plywood floor so I can still have the insulation properties but without the wear and tear.

 

[Searsmom]

You might consider adding some ventilation holes along that top ridge and perhaps some on the shelf level as well. Nesting boxes get really hot. I use to have one similar to this in that it was a tunnel nest but I didn't have anything fancy like your pull out drawer. Until I added ventilation, my birds wouldn't use it.

OK, I tried to post both the illustration and this comment, but. So if you made the height of the walls the same all the way around, it would have two posts supporting the roof opposite the hole, that would give added ventilation, but it would also add more light re. egg eating. Maybe a screen so ventilation could still happen but the lighting wouldn't be as bright?

 

[lindz8504]

Ok, this may help....... I want to be able to keep the top part with the door.... The tall cubby sections are 29" tall, and we plan to split the ones for the nest in half to make 4 nests. If we use the top cubbies, they will be 3' and 4' roughly from the ground. If I decide to go ahead and split both top and bottom in half, then I could use the "Middle 4" as nests and they would be 2' and 3' roughly off the ground..... I don't want to use the very bottom one, because I think they will throw the litter into the nests just like they do now, in my other coop.


Here is a photo from the feed area side of the coop in progress.... All of Hubby's tools he's using!

And a photo from the chicken side of the coop in progress....


We are going to put boards about 3' up the walls, and then wire the rest of the way up. Then we have to put another layer of siding on it, because the boards were green and really shrunk after we put them up. When we first sided it, you couldn't see any daylight through the boards, and we were really proud of ourselves.... Well, you shouldn't be proud, cause the good Lord laughed at us for it!

Here's some pictures of my current coop.....

Ground level nest boxes... We did have to extend the dividers between them....

 

[Beekissed]

Do you have a wall long enough on this coop to turn that cubby cabinet on its side and utilize it in that manner instead? You could make the door of the little cupboard open downwards and still use it as storage and then place all your nests at the same height and at whatever level you wished.

Those cracks? Excellent ventilation....don't feel bad about those!

 

[lindz8504]

Do you have a wall long enough on this coop to turn that cubby cabinet on its side and utilize it in that manner instead? You could make the door of the little cupboard open downwards and still use it as storage and then place all your nests at the same height and at whatever level you wished.

Those cracks? Excellent ventilation....don't feel bad about those!

Not so that I could get the eggs without having to go into the "coop" part of the building, and having to do alot more frame-work to separate the feed storage side.... I'm going to talk to the Hubby tonight and see what he thinks about changing some things around. We'll see what we come up with and I'll post pictures along the way!

And as far as the cracks... do you think that they will cause too much of a draft or should we just leave them?

 

[Beekissed]

Not so that I could get the eggs without having to go into the "coop" part of the building, and having to do alot more frame-work to separate the feed storage side.... I'm going to talk to the Hubby tonight and see what he thinks about changing some things around. We'll see what we come up with and I'll post pictures along the way!

And as far as the cracks... do you think that they will cause too much of a draft or should we just leave them?

Nope....I don't think they will cause a draft unless you get some serious winds where you live. In that case, you can just tack up feed sacks on the inside walls directly where they roost but leave the rest open. Can you tell I've had a coop just like this?

Cracks big enough to stick your finger through.....

You might consider cutting your cubby cabinet down so you can fit it sideways and then mount the "storage" cupboard part elsewhere.