Things you've learned while building your coop...

[bluie]

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My golden laced wyandotte is huge. 2 square feet is NOT going to be big enough for clean happy birds. The prevailing wisdom is 4 sq feet inside the coop and 10 sq feet in the run per bird. I have just a smidge over that and it seems a bit crowded.

 

[bluie]

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Boy do I hear ya. I am 5'7" and have a doorway and an eave that are about 5'6". Ouch.

 

[onthespot]

ohhhh... last spring someone gave me some old burnout silkie broodies and an oooold silkie roo. We are zoned for chickens. I can have 300 chickens and 13 roosters on my property. I started out with five li'l ol hens and a roo. My neighbor has mules that bray A LOT and large, noisy dogs that bounce off the fence and bark deep, loud and nonstop the whole time I am in my back yard. In seven years he has never asked his dogs to shut up one single time, to my knowledge... Anyhow, I get my li'l birds, and he freaks out, and takes to hosing them down in February in the middle of the night, ruined several barrels of feed, got my chickens all sick and they either died or I had to cull them all, but I did have one setting on eggs in a separate cage which hatched out my copper black marans eggs, and that was the beginning of my saga. We have had go-rounds since. Last time he called animal control to complain, I cursed them the widest blue streak, I think they have ever heard out of any civilian ever, told them what he could do with those roosters sideways and that every bogus AC call I get from him I will acknowledge by acquiring another rooster. I have not heard from him since.

 

[TammyTX]

After cleaning our garage for hours and hours of all the thick DUST, please let me add this to the thread...

....if you can safely (warmth/protection) put your chicks outside in your coop/brooder after a couple of weeks then do it.

I have no idea where all that dust came from. The shavings, I guess but it was baaaad.

 

[Zahboo]

Shavings are very dusty.


If you haven't built or planned your coop yet, check out patandchickens ventilation page! It's great!

 

[pinguin]

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Much of it comes from the chicks themselves as they shed their baby down. What doesn't float gets ground into dust by baby feet. And yes, the bedding does, too, eventually.

Few weeks back, I was talking to my neighbor. One of our girls had hatched out 4 babies for them, still in their basement at 3 months. Raised my brows & asked, "Uh, isn't the dust getting to be a problem?" She let out a gasp & said, "I wondered why my can goods were covered with dust."

They've since moved outside.

 

[fhdogs]

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Attach a toilet seat lid to your seat. make sure you put the lid down when not in use and then whenever you are ready to sit you've got a clean spot.

Or you with a couple of hinges, and plywood you could make your own lid. I've seen this in the bird room at a pet store before.

 

[Zahboo]

Make sure that if you are using thin wood to predrill holes!

 

[Emzyyy]

Cover the ground of your run with much sand and boards around the outside like a giant sand box so they kick less sand out. Also when you build the nest boxes slant the tops of them so they cannot sit on top and poop on them its nice to be able to remove the nest boxes w/o getting poo all over your hands. Definatly raise the water bowl and make sure the food container (whatever you use) does not move because they love tippin' those things over.

 

[New adventure]

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Wish I'd read this before I started singin' the "purple fingernail" blues. That hurt!