Tips to Improve a Chicken Coop (especially for ease of cleaning)

[ATP]

Nice conversation going here, but the OP who asked for help, @ATP has not responded since 16 July.

@ATP, have you finished your coop improvements? If so, would love to see what you did. Thanks.

Thank you for reaching out.

Sorry, due to personal circumstances I was not able to be online in months.

Hubby and I have continued to work on it over the summer, but had to stop for a few months. We are back at work for the last final touchups and hope to get the girls moving very soon.

I will share photos and updates in the next few days.

 

[ATP]

Thank you @gtaus for reaching out.

Sorry, due to personal circumstances I was not able to be online in months.

Hubby and I have continued to work on it over the summer, but had to stop for a few months. We are back at work for the last final touchups and hope to get the girls moving very soon.

I will share photos and updates in the next few days.

 

[ATP]

I did not want to start a new thread, so I thought I'll post my update/s here. Thank y'all for caring and reading.

The verse that kept coming to my mind while working at the coop and the run was:

What is crooked cannot be made straight,
And what is lacking cannot be numbered. – Ecclesiastes 1:15

I'm not so sure if I'm able to put my experience in words, but I'll do the best I can. (Sorry for the long post )

Last year, my husband and I asked the landlord for permission to keep chickens. He came back to us and said it is okay for us to have a little flock of hens. We were thrilled and continued our homework–researching as much as we can to prepare ourselves for this new adventure.

We told the landlord that we would like to go ahead and buy a shed (= walk in chicken coop), but that was not an option. The landlord said to get a chicken coop and he would bring barriers to put around it, so "the chickens will not get into the garden." (I believe a chicken run should have a more important function: keeping the chicken safe.)

We checked chicken coop plans and found a few that we really liked. Then we bought the materials for one of the coops with a walk in run. We were just working along when the landlord "delivered" a coop that one of his workers made. He also brought along (construction site) barriers. Now what? We should not refuse his kind offer, should we?

The coop brought many challenges and the barriers even more. We tackled the weak spots of the coop, one after the other, and it seemed to improve more and more. In the end I was happy enough with the big enough doors to clean it and with the extra ventilation windows.

The barriers around it were in no wise a "secure run" for chickens. We used the timber we originally bought to build a coop and run for improvement of the barriers-run. No matter what we tried, though, we could not "straighten" nor safely secure the run.

Whatever we built we took apart again, and after four times of unsuccessfully building a secure run with the barriers, we set them aside. Next, we built a run from scratch without the barriers. We made a big mistake, though. We built the frame according to the coop (which in itself is not straight). By the end of September, I gave up and I wanted nothing to do with chicken keeping in 2024.

We picked up the work again this year. Just like last year, I used filler to fill all the cracks, and whitewashed the coop. Again, the coop seemed ready.

The run needed to be taken down and rebuild. This time we built it completely disconnected from the coop and we used stronger timber for it.

It was nearly done this week, but...

I cried double checking the inside of the coop today. Within just two weeks, it had many new smaller and larger cracks. I do not want my chickens to be tortured by mites, so I give up. There is no way of myself filling the cracks inside the coop every other week.

From day one, we wanted to have a solid (and straight) walk in shed with a solid and secure run. We should have never compromised.

Looking back, we would have been better off buying a plastic coop like a Nestera and an attached run. This would have been cheaper, too, as we spent a lot of money on timber, extra screws, washers, etc.

Thank you for reading. I do appreciate all the replies I got so far and I will continue to hang around here and keep on reading and learning.

Thank you SO much!

 

[NewcoopNewpoop]

Bear with me here but.... your coop looks great. And chickens get mites no matter what, thats a big reason why they dust bathe.

The possibility exists that you are letting perfect be the enemy of good and it is making you despair at the journey to chicken keeping. There is no "perfect" coop. And the purists here online are brutal.

Deep breath, step back, and give yourself grace. And go get a few chickens. You've worked hard and you deserve it.

 

[ATP]

Bear with me here but.... your coop looks great. And chickens get mites no matter what, thats a big reason why they dust bathe.

The possibility exists that you are letting perfect be the enemy of good and it is making you despair at the journey to chicken keeping. There is no "perfect" coop. And the purists here online are brutal.

Deep breath, step back, and give yourself grace. And go get a few chickens. You've worked hard and you deserve it.

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement. Surely some things to (admit and) think about.

Thank you! I SO appreciate your input here.