Thoughts on this coop?

[aart]

Can't I just cut small ventilation windows in top corners, and make roof a little bigger?

You could make the roof bigger and leave open soffits like this:

More pics here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/aarts-coop-page.65912/

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I didn't read through everyone's suggestions, but my first coop was a similar style with a 4x6" footprint. It was a bonafide PIA to clean. The lid to the nestboxes was heavy and cumbersome for actual egg collection, so I crouched to go into the coop. Honestly, not being able to fully stand or fit in the coop drove me over the edge. If you build, I highly recommend making it tall enough to stand in! If you bought five pieces of 8x4 plywood, you can make a 4 foot wide by 6 foot long coop that has standing room, or six pieces of plywood for a 6'x 6' foot. You wouldn't need to do a lot of cutting unless you didn't' want it to be 8' tall. Buy old, reclaimed, or new metal siding to cover the roof and the plywood (we used metal siding to ward off carpenter bees and troublesome bears, but that was just me). You don't NEED hinged nestboxes, which are a PIA to build and leaky anyways. You'd need about 6-8 post holes which would take a few hours to dig by hand, a half day to finish the base/floor, a day to finish all the wall and roof framing, a day to put up all the walls and ceiling, and another day to finish a basic interior. Maybe a day to do windows, doors, and pop doors. This timeframe is coming from my own NOVICE experience in building a coop. Only new tool we had to buy was a framing nail gun, which was a great investment. Otherwise, the only tools we used were a table saw, chop saw, and handsaw. We could have gone without the table saw and chop saw at the expense of a little extra time. Our coop was an 10x20 sq foot coop. We spent extra on some bells and whistles, but without those extras, we'd be at around the$3000 range for expenses. A coop that size that was premade is around 10-12k and not nearly as nice as ours. We bought our materials during the post-covid price hike too. We got materials from the ReStore by Habitat for Humanity. Personally, I'm on team DIY! Simple is the way to go.

 

[jennyinvermont]

Very poor ventilation. Those tiny vents and any open spaces in the roof "bumps" amount to a few square inches when you need a minimum of 1 square foot of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation per chicken.

Where, in general, are you located? Climate matters as does likely predator load.

What about a hoop coop or a shed conversion?

How many chickens do you have/intend to get?

How could you have 1 sq foot of ventilation/bird? Can you show me a picture of that? That would be like an entire wall? We will have 4-7 hens.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

How could you have 1 sq foot of ventilation/bird? Can you show me a picture of that? That would be like an entire wall? We will have 4-7 hens.

Most people accomplish the ventilation with open rafters. It's a real challenge to have sufficient draft-free ventilation. Personally, I've found I can get away with far less ventilation when I practice a dry-coop management. I use poop boards and remove night droppings first thing in the morning and don't leave my water inside. We closed nearly all of our ventilation this winter and kept the chooks indoors for two weeks in a row (so water was in with them) and the humidity inside was never 10% more inside than it was outside, and never above 60%. I'd start with open rafters, at least.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

So. This was actually a (mostly) goat pen I was working on, but it will illustrate some useful techniques. Here you can see open rafters, before the fascia board and gutters have been installed. Normally, I (and almost all others) would recommend much more overhang, but this wasn't intended primarily as a chicken coop.

Anyhow, the open rafter is the area you see directly under the metal roof. This is framed with 2x4s, which are 3.5" "tall". A purlin runs across them, onto which the roof is attached. The purlin adds another 3/4" in height or so. We'll call that 4". The whole building is 10' long, or 120". So that's about 480 sq inches of ventilation, per side. 960 sq inch total, just under the eaves - a little over 6.5 sq ft of ventilation.

The ridge vent at the top encourages passive air flow so the metal roof doesn't radiate a lot of heat into the house (and mostly, its reflected anyways), but it only sits about 1" above the roof. Adds another 1.5 sq ft of ventilation (obviously, not if covered by snow in your climate).

Had this been intended as a hen house, I'd have extended the roof another 1' or so, and then would cover that big gap under the rafter, and the soffits as well, with 1/2" hardware cloth. The gap is about 8", adding 13 more sq ft of ventilation, 24/7, **IF** it was sheltered by the roof overhang. My birds can sit on roosting bars 2' off the ground, and still have their combs below the level of any drafts coming thru the lower opening (4' off the ground and a bit more). Obviously, if I had built this a bit taller, I could raise the roosting bars, adjust the wall heights, play with windows, do creative things with the nest boxes (currently plastic milk crates a few inches off the ground), etc.

From the inside, it looks like this (yes, I should have used longer screws to attach the roof - you want to see at least 3 threads penetration thru the purlin). The rafters are attached to the 2x6 beam with a $0.68 Simpson Strong-tie and some 12d rafter nails. The whole thing went up very quickly:

 

[3KillerBs]

How could you have 1 sq foot of ventilation/bird? Can you show me a picture of that? That would be like an entire wall? We will have 4-7 hens.

This is my current coop with 4 square feet of ventilation in a monitor roof and another .75 square foot or so in an additional window because I'm in a hot climate.

It meets all the minimums for 4 chickens.

I don't know how well Monitor Roofs work in areas with heavy snow, but the cupolas you see on old barns were for ventilation.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Monitor, and half monitor (if you've a prevailing winter wind you can really count on), together with a good roof overhang, are great choices when you don't want to shovel snow off the hen house first thing after a big storm - unlike the tiny ridge vent in my FL design, its not quickly blocked by just an inch or so of powder.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Forgive the feed bags being used to catch droppings. Still trying to find a happy spot for the height of the bars, then the CMUs will go under the milk crate egg cratons, get them off the ground.. But if I was to do open side Coop with attached run I might start with half of this goat shed and simply extend the run off the peak.

 

[Alaskan]

For winter, a roofed run is terrific! Otherwise, you will be shoveling it out so the birds will go outside, and if they are inside for any length of time, double your square footage per bird.

So important.

If you extend the roof of the coop, out over a roofed run, then that coop wall, that is fully protected by the run roof, can be half wire in winter, and full wire in summer.

 

[Alaskan]

I looked... I don't have good photos of the ventilation in my bantam coop... I will try to take some later today..

But here is the article link
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/alaskans-no-cost-bantam-coop.67213/

The back wall has a strip of ventilation, not tall,maybe 3 or 4 inches, the entire short wall length.

The roof is a car truck topper, that sticks out over a foot from the front wall if the coop.

This roof overhang protects the front wall, so the people door is usually open. In addition, the top of the front wall, is completely wire. The front wall stops at the door header, above the door header is wire. The truck topper completely protects that large opening from snow. In the summer the glass windows of the truck topper can all be opened.