The Front Porch Swing

[Searsmom]

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.

Awesome idea - feed sacks - we get serious winds and my mind has wandered from stealing DH's horse panel fencing for my chicken pen, to pilfering from his fallen down shed (very old) for wood to have a separate duck house. Now I know how to fix the gaps that would be all over the place!

Your chicken house looks great lindz!

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: LOL... I am really good at drawing floor plans.... Pm me a sketch and I will see what I can do...

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: Yep... dont get as hot as you.... maybe 90-95 most of the summer with a spike or two in the hunderds.

Oh gawd the committee just came IN I will post more later.... Have to go..

deb

 

[Lacy Blues]

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?

My tunnel nest did have equal height sides. The back "wall" of the coop went up about half way. The ends were open. The open ends and upper back wall were covered with dark green shade cloth. The whole thing was inside my coop underneath the poop board. It was plenty dark and the shade cloth allowed for plenty of ventilation. The "roof" of the nest was hinged in the middle so I could reach in and just lift the lid and collect eggs.

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....

I was going to say, regarding the gaps in your wall, that if you put that together with screws instead of nails you could remove the screws, one board at a time and close the gaps. That way you would only need to buy one or two more boards to fill up the spaces you created. But Bee, in all of her wisdom said it was good for ventilation. Instead of feed sacks though, and those are totally ok if that's the way you want to go, but maybe on just the inside where your birds perch, you could put more boards going the other direction and they would be protected from drafts.

So, the open area between your shelf systems/cubby nests you want to keep open so you can put a screen door and be able to walk through that area, correct? And the very top of those shelves is what, 6 feet? I would think, depending on what breed your birds are, that if you were to provide a way to get onto the top shelf for a nest that they would only have to jump up a little higher and they'd be on the top and then on the other side of that partition and into your feed storage area. You could make a door for that middle area on the feed storage side with some of the same type of wood that you used to cover your coop and it would look nice. That would only provide footing for them at 2 and 3 feet off the floor and hopefully they wouldn't attempt to scale over the top.

Yep... dont get as hot as you.... maybe 90-95 most of the summer with a spike or two in the hunderds.

Oh gawd the committee just came IN I will post more later.... Have to go..

deb

I had this nest when I lived in the Sierra Nevada mountains and we got roughly those exact same temperatures.

 

[sarahsunshine]

Sarah,

Oh I should warn you, 'LEAVE the house'. Smelling this all day makes you really hungry!

Lisa

too late... I'm starving!!!!

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: Thats the nice part about sketching before building.... I am thinking of putting a ventilation stack on it sort of like an outhouse but just putting some 1" diameter holes on the outside surfaces should still maintain "privacy".... This new Poultry house will be well shaded and reletively cooler than the rest of the poultry areas.... I am intending on doing slatted walls like the pictures above... Only my slats will be vertical I had the opportunity to go into a box stall that was built like that OMg it was sooo cool inside.

Another option for my poultry house will be providing some evaporative cooling.

Oh and I am putting Poop Hammocks instead of poop boards. Dam I just remembered when I lost my manuscript I lost thge sketch book with it that I was doing cuddle spaces for those very cold windy days.....

I need to get to sketchin....


deb

 

[perchie.girl]

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?

Foam insulation may work but it also keeps the heat in. Air circulation is key to allow a container to equalize with the outside temperatures. My Other idea that I abaondoned for the Tunnel nest was to buy Terracotta Chimeras.... (outdoor fireplace)
http://www.little-baja.com/bajachimney.html .... NOT doing their prices because I can go to Mexico just across the border and get em. But the deal is Terracotta is very porous and if you drip water from a small water emitter it will absorb into the pot and evaporate out.... chilling the inside just about ten degrees.

For what its worth you can make a vegitable refrigerator with TWO terracotta pots sized to nest in each other.... (Pot in Pot refrigeration is used in India and Africa) Seal off the bottom of the big one set the little one inside and fill the gap between with sand. Now fill the sand gap with water..... Put veggies in the container and cover with damp burlap. Keeps em fresh weeks. compared to No refrigeration at all.

I could probably line the tunnel nest with terracotta tiles though.... Hmmmm ...... Hmmmm... Have to deal with moisture on the inside... I am thinking it through so Need to sketch a while to deal with lots of issues.

Where I am located the temp differences between night and day can be as much as 20 degrees.... With a pretty much constant breeze. So night time temps are good.

deb back to the sketch book

 

[TexasLisa]

too late... I'm starving!!!!

Did you make it? Let me know what you thought of it.

Thats the nice part about sketching before building.... I am thinking of putting a ventilation stack on it sort of like an outhouse but just putting some 1" diameter holes on the outside surfaces should still maintain "privacy".... This new Poultry house will be well shaded and reletively cooler than the rest of the poultry areas.... I am intending on doing slatted walls like the pictures above... Only my slats will be vertical I had the opportunity to go into a box stall that was built like that OMg it was sooo cool inside.

Another option for my poultry house will be providing some evaporative cooling.

Oh and I am putting Poop Hammocks instead of poop boards. Dam I just remembered when I lost my manuscript I lost thge sketch book with it that I was doing cuddle spaces for those very cold windy days.....

I need to get to sketchin....


deb

Deb, I have a feeling you are going to have that 'oops' feeling for quite some time on your sketches. Have you been able to replace your walker yet? I can't believe they took your walker. PEOPLE!

Lisa

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: LOL Never mind the car.... Parked IN a Flippin handicapped zone.....

Ooh that brick on my head feels sooooo good. No replacement yet the walker was alomst 400 dollars. I am going to replace it but its not high on mylist of things right now. I have to take that money and buy two new batteries in my truck so I will have to replace it next month unless I can find one on Craigslist. Just sold my driving car two weeks ago...

I have even more sketches on my Coop Rebuild page.... The link is in my signature. The "floorplan of the coop is being changed in corel because I cant run SolidWorks on this computer right now. The way it shows in the rebuild was my first iteration. I am used to doing up to ten iterations before I am happy with a design.

deb

 

[Beekissed]

Wait a tic....parked in a handicap zone? You mean the folks that stole it parked there? You got the car back? I'm so lost....