The Great Winter Coop Humidity/Ventilation Experiment! Post Your Results Here!

[UtePassChickens]

just east of divide (as my name suggests lol) and we running close to 40F by day and 20F at night...right now 39F at 23%humidity. It is a radical difference in weather, if we drive west for just 10 minutes! I do use a mix of pineneedles and straw, about 8" thick for absorbant dry bedding. i do use some Garden pot bottom pans under their sleeping roost and empty into bucket when mounds build and take to the compost pile......

 

[mobius]

Been a bit lax last few days, still monitoring tho...thought I would post what i found right now:

8:30 a.m.

Outside: -15F RH82
Coop: -1F RH59

Only pop door is open. Chickens still in coop. Warm food and water next. They are getting a bit of scratch, and suet daily...warmed FF and fermented alfalfa...active and busy yesterday taking dust baths and eating kale, their treat of the day. More straw everywhere yesterday.

 

[mobius]

9:15 am

And out they all came, pleasantly active, not particularly slow. I am rather pleased that under the coop itself they have a huddle place that is partially filled with straw...

Combs look great. Chickens roosting in the run, looking like footballs!

 

[mobius]

More Bitter Cold! Pop Door open, window and moveable upper vent closed. Passive eave and gable vents open always, of course. Yesterday I noticed a fair amount of dust on the outside of those passive vents, which would indicate there is some amount of airflow (!) through them! Yay!

Last night

11 pm

Outside: -11F RH 85
Coop: 1F RH 61

This morning

8:30 am

Outside: -4F RH 82
Coop: 6F RH 64

So far so good. Seriously high outside RH...SMH. Time to brush out those vents, I think. Never thought about them getting clogged up.

 

[Beekissed]

So, ten degrees warmer than outside temps in there and MUCH less humidity. I think that's a great balance going on there!

My rooster's tips had darkened a few weeks back in that 20* weather, so my solution was to open up some ventilation near the roosts and apply some castor oil, which I had neglected to do to my flock this winter...usually do that from the start. Anyhoo...good to report his tips came back to full red and no further incident of frosting since then with that vent open by the roosts a few inches.

We are heading into a few days of single digit weather at night, teens and 20s in the day, so will see if that is still effective for colder temps. Soon we should be seeing the subzero temps and more snow, so will watch my humidity gauge(the rooster's comb) as time goes along.

 

[mobius]

As promised, some belated pics of venting. I added this on one gable end.

These were added on both sides under the eaves. I had (and still am) considered ripping out the soffit entirely and putting hardware cloth on the inside of the coop. The eaves are open to the inside.

Closed but moveable vent just below roost height opposite but above window. Notably, there is some form of vent opening on each the four sides of the coop. You can see where the temp/hygrometer is positioned, about at beak level. Also note the opening to the eave just above...where the roof is framed...this is on both sides and vented by the round vents in the soffits.

Thanks @Beekissed ! Nice to hear how HEALING the castor oil is. Love me some castor oil for many purposes. Best emollient/skin healer ever. May be time for me to reapply to mine! Also, so important that you were able to mention the weather conditions when your rooster got nipped! Seems completely counter-intuitive to vent near chickens heads (!) but seems to be an answer! Vent up high!

I am feeling surprised and pleased with how well this seems to be working at the moment. Remember everyone, this is a small coop. YCMV.

 

[Beekissed]

It's good to see pics of what folks are using as vents and ventilation and I think those you have is what most people picture when we talk about vents. That's understandable, too, because the word vent is usually applied to just what you picture here. I can see where those would have to be cleaned on occasion to prevent dust from cutting off airflow.

Since I usually deal with old wooden structures with very thick wood in the walls and now this hoop coop, my ventilation consists of pop doors, gaps and cracks in the structure, open areas at the top of the arch on either end of the coop, top of the coop door is always open to air as are two small spaces on either side of the door, windows that are more like shutters or wooden flaps that can be opened or closed or propped open a few inches, tarps lifted or fastened down, etc.

In the old wooden structures, venting was open areas under the eaves, pop doors, large cutout windows covered in wire on the walls...one coop had almost the entirety of one wall in wire covered "windows"...no glass in any coop windows I've had before, though I see folks using regular house type windows in coops nowadays.

So, when I talk about plenty of ventilation and what other people picture when I say it, are most likely two VERY different things.

It's hard to convey to folks, especially those with smaller coops, what is meant by "plenty" because there's not much roof height or wall space to play with in smaller coops. I think the level of venting you have there and the adjustable venting you have in other places most likely is enough for winter time ventilation in a small coop....most people don't have more than one of those small vents.

Not sure about that level in a hot and humid summer climate, though...I think I'd want some large windows for light and airflow both summer and winter. Does it stay cool in your coop in the summer months?

 

[lazy gardener]

Plenty is such an ambiguous word, and so subject to interpretation. "My coop has plenty of room. My coop has plenty of ventilation" For one, that may be 8 s.f./bird. for an other that may mean 2 s.f./bird. For one, that may mean 1 - 2 round 4" diameter vents. For an other, that may mean an entire wall being completely open. IMO, it would be most helpful if objective information is given: "coop floor is 120 s.f. and there is a total of 25 s.f. of ventilation, including floor level, soffit, gable vents, 3 windows and pop door. Bee, you did a good job describing your varied venting. It helps the reader picture your set up. So often, we all tend to imagine every coop set up to be a mirror image of what we know, which may be just the coop sitting in our own yard.

 

[Beekissed]

Plenty is such an ambiguous word, and so subject to interpretation. "My coop has plenty of room. My coop has plenty of ventilation" For one, that may be 8 s.f./bird. for an other that may mean 2 s.f./bird. For one, that may mean 1 - 2 round 4" diameter vents. For an other, that may mean an entire wall being completely open. IMO, it would be most helpful if objective information is given: "coop floor is 120 s.f. and there is a total of 25 s.f. of ventilation, including floor level, soffit, gable vents, 3 windows and pop door. Bee, you did a good job describing your varied venting. It helps the reader picture your set up. So often, we all tend to imagine every coop set up to be a mirror image of what we know, which may be just the coop sitting in our own yard.

I soooooo agree! Every time someone says they have plenty of space or plenty of ventilation I immediately think "your idea of plenty or mine?". Now, for me, I can't even picture in square feet measurements, my mind can't seem to translate that into an image...I prefer good pictures, like Mobius has done above. Pics of the coop at all angles, outside and in, the run at different angles, etc. When they calculate so many square inches of ventilation for so many square feet of coop, I often wonder if they are even considering how tall that coop is....ventilation works much differently in short coops than it does in taller ones.

Even the descriptions I gave above are hard for people to imagine if they've never had a hoop coop or if a window, to them, is an actual sliding, cased out window like one would see in a house.

Now...if I showed them this pic, which shows the venting at the arch of the hoops, the top half of the door and side windows, that also have small shutters that drop down to enlarge those spaces, the cracks left in the structure that allow airflow at all levels, etc., they can get an idea of some of the ventilation.



Then this pic, which shows the large window/shutter that can be opened back by the roosts(the one I recently cracked open at the bottom to dispel humidity near the roosts so that my rooster's comb can heal), the pop door right beneath the roosts that is open all winter and even the way the tarps can be lifted to allow HUGE cross breezes in the coop all summer long, then they could finally get an idea of what I mean when I say "plenty" when I talk to them about DL and such.




In this day of cell phones and how easy it is to take a pic and upload it to the net, it shouldn't be too hard for most folks to get pics on here. I have to take them with an actual camera, download those to a program on my computer, sort through them and crop or such, THEN upload them to BYC....all of that takes a good bit of time with my ancient equipment.

It would be really nice, for this thread in particular, if folks were to show their vents and their coops in relation to those vents so that a person could get a good idea about what they are working with, wouldn't it?

 

[mobius]

it so would be nice @Beekissed ! Everyone's setup is SO different. But I want to sit in that chair you have pictured!

And where I am in Montana, in the summer, everything wide open, it is completely lovely. That is our best time...suitcase season, we call it. Never gets very hot, sleeping weather for me and the chickens is 50F overnight, windows open!