This Old Coop-House

[nicklebees]

Hello, I'm Nick from Southeast Ohio. I've never had birds before, but I'm renovating the existing coop on my new property. Here below are a few photos taken during my recent re-coop-eration efforts.

I've since put on a new plywood roof and next up are door repairs and the metal roof replacement, gutters/rainwater barrel. I'm considering adding a run as I have over 1000' of metal deer fence rusting in a pile, however there is plenty of space to free range.

Given the air-gaps between all the siding boards, I have a choice to make - board and batten with solid doors and engineer a plan for ventilation, or embrace the open air and add a screen door using hardware cloth. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I'm open to suggestions.







The coop is 8'x14' and there are twelve nest boxes and a drafty brooder area.

 

[aart]

Welcome to BYC!

"re-coop-eration" .... haha, good one!

Think about both summer and winter ventilation..... what's good for one season, won't cut it for the other.
Here's pretty good discussion thread on ventilation:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1048597/ventilated-but-free-of-drafts

Looks like a pretty nice structure to start with, if the framing is all sound.
One thing I see is those nests are too high up, so I'll pop my notes on here:

Here's my theory on the 'stack up' aspect to coop design:
Bottom of pop door is best about 8" above floor so bedding doesn't get dragged out of coop.
Nice to have bottom of nests about 18" above bedding to allow use of that floor space under them(doesn't count if your nests are mounted on outside of coop).
Roosts are best about 12" higher than nests so birds won't roost(sleep) in nests and poop in them, if you use poop boards under roosts it will also 'stretch' your floor space. Upper venting works best as high as possible above roosts so no strong drafts hit roosts in winter...and hot/moist air and ammonia can rise and exit coop.