To anyone thinking of getting one of those cute little coops….

[SituationalLefty]

I understand the measurements are on the box, but even you know that six chickens couldn’t fit in there full time, you have yours all split up.

I think the point we’re trying to make is it’s just hard for new chicken owners to know that those measurements aren’t enough room for up to 6 full grown chickens. It’s hard when they’re so tiny to know that they’ll get really big and not fit in there anymore.

I remember crying because i was so upset that this was advertised for that many chickens and once our 4 started to grow they just didn’t have enough room in there. The frustration was very real and I just would hate for any new chicken keepers to make the same mistake I did.

This. And much of the marketing is for people who are beginning with chickens. You kind of have to go to chicken University before you understand what is needed in a coop and run.

 

[fuzzi]

My coop when I first finished it! About 24ft long and almost 10ft wide.
View attachment 3417206

Definitely Taj Mahal!

I built a modest 16'x8', just over 6'h in the center.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I just added some new chicks to my other Sentinel coop. They were 24 hours old when I put them in it. They are great brooder coops. The chicks will spend the first several weeks on the ground, then when they don’t need constant heat I’ll teach them to roost up in the coop and I’ll move the heater up there.

 

[SourRoses]

You don't worry about them being eaten from below?
Why not brood them in the brooder, err "coop" portion?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

You don't worry about them being eaten from below?
Why not brood them in the brooder, err "coop" portion?

It seems to make them stronger to be brooded on the dirt and grass from day 1. It exposes them to the pathogens in the environment, especially what’s on the grass.

The only reason I put them in a coop is to give them some protection from predators such as snakes, which are ever present on my farm. Otherwise I’d just throw them out and let them free range with access to a heat lamp. I have a buddy who has less predators than I and he has great success doing just that. He turns them out at 24 hours old under a tipped water trough and a heat lamp and lets them come and go in the yard as they please. But he’s been doing it that way for many years, so natural selection has given him some very strong chickens by culling out the ones that can’t live that way.

 

[Christie311]

That was the nightmarish part of my experience - thinking 'but that can't be right... am I crazy??' when people and websites are saying that it is ok, and there appears to be no alternative.

EXACTLY! I told my husband "I must be missing something, when I look at these prebuilt coops from the store they look good but if you see them in person I can't understand how they can work, but the next option I see is a huge structure that is custom made and costs as much as a car!" LOL We concluded that if you want something middle of the road as far as price goes but is designed properly you need to build it your self. Thankfully we found someone local that builds them so we went with that and we will build the extended run portion. I had a very similar experience when looking for a rabbit hutch. I think I got the wrong impression about how to keep animals when I grew up with a hamster and a fish LOL!!!!

 

[KyCoop]

Let me throw out another issue of the prefab in case someone is STILL considering one. Wind. Check you local listings but around here lately the wind has been ferocious. 71 mph wind gust took down my small greenhouse.

I Don't want to think about what that would do to prefab.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Let me throw out another issue of the prefab in case someone is STILL considering one. Wind. Check you local listings but around here lately the wind has been ferocious. 71 mph wind gust took down my small greenhouse.

I Don't want to think about what that would do to prefab.

The frame had actually tilted over and crashed into a sentinel coop next to it. Back nesting box door was torn off, as well as back window and lots of the trim was bashed off from the impact. The birds all were mostly unharmed somehow, but 2 were buried in the debris in that back corner of the poop tray and 3 were scattered outside and hiding. These pictures are from the next day when it was light enough to see everything

 

[SituationalLefty]

View attachment 3418767
The frame had actually tilted over and crashed into a sentinel coop next to it. Back nesting box door was torn off, as well as back window and lots of the trim was bashed off from the impact. The birds all were mostly unharmed somehow, but 2 were buried in the debris in that back corner of the poop tray and 3 were scattered outside and hiding. These pictures are from the next day when it was light enough to see everything

OMG. I'm glad predators didn't get them.

 

[becstalls]

Feed stores run on chicks. Chick related impulse buys make up a large % of a feed store's total business, and forces customers back each month for feed, and inevitably....more chicks. It would hurt their business to be honest about how much space Chickens need, and any coops that fit the bill would be priced out of reach for impulse buy customers. That applies mostly to big chain stores, I've found small local feed stores that don't sell coops are much more honest about their requirements-they want you to get hooked on chickens and keep them healthy for long term feed sales.

I have found this to be true as well. We have a TSC and a family owned feed store in my town, and a Rural King will be added in the next year or so. The family feed store doesn’t sell coops at all, and when I ordered my chicks last month (they only do by order, they don’t keep any in store), the owner made sure to ask me whether or not I had two brooders just in case the two breeds I ordered arrived a week or two apart. And amazingly, he called me as I was typing this because he (like everyone else) is having a hard time getting chicks, and to get his normal price, he orders in batches of 100. He wasn’t able to get up to 100 orders for the breeds I was after, so he was making sure I still wanted them if they’d cost a little more per chick and I’d be ok with May delivery instead of April.