thecreekhouse
Songster
My coop (tractor)was built by Smoky Mountain Chicken Tractors in Knoxville. I’m very happy with it. The coop’s interior is 6′ long by 3′ wide. It has a 6 foot long roosting bar and 4 exterior nestboxes, offering more floor space. The run on which the coop sits is 16 feet long and 3 feet wide. The run is fully enclosed (including the bottom) with hardware cloth and it has multiple access doors. The coop has double wide doors on the side across from the nest boxes and a single door on the back. All doors on the coop and run have double closures: a wooden bar combined with a complicated metal latch.
The coop has a metal roof and plenty of ventilation (covered by hardware cloth) just below the roof line. The exterior of the coop is covered in thick hardiplank and is painted with weatherproof paint. The unpainted lumber used for the attached run is treated to be weather resistant. Only screws were used in the build, no nails. I have a PVC pipe feeder that allows me to top off the chickens’ feed from outside the coop. I also have a plastic box filled with sand under the coop, inside the run so that the chickens can dustbathe.
One unique element of my coop is that basically the entire floor of the coop is one big poop board, if you know what that is. The coop’s floor is made of tempered hardboard and it easily slides out to be scraped clean in under two minutes with a hoe. I use a very thin layer of PDZ granular on the flooor and scrape it clean every few days. What this means is that there is no litter or shavings inside my coop (except in the nestboxes). When they’re inside the coop, the chickens walk on the regularly-cleaned hardboard instead of on shavings or litter. I wasn’t 100% sure how I’d like a coop with no litter or shavings but I love it. The sub flooring below the slide out tempered hardwood is well insulated plywood.
Inside the nestboxes I use Petmate brand nesting pads which are made by attaching a thick layer of soft, fluffy, shavings-like, biodegradable nesting material to a square of biodegradable paper backing. To clean the nestboxes I just lift the Petmate nesting pad out of the box from one of the exterior nestbox doors, shake off any mess and then put it back in the nestbox. I have had the same pads in the boxes for two months so far and they are still in great shape and don’t need replacing yet.
In addition to being able to be outside on grass when they’re inside the run attached to their coop, the chickens can also leave the run and enter the Omlet- brand fencing that I’ve installed encircling the coop and run. This offers them about three or four feet of extra (in addition to the run) greenspace in every direction out from the run proper. When I want to secure the chickens, I lock them in their coop and attached run. When I want them to enjoy some supervised semi-free ranging, I let them out into the fenced area.
My coop and attached run are actually a chicken tractor with wheels and handles for moving around onto green grass. The Omlet fencing is also meant to be movable so every month or so I move the coop and run onto a fresh patch of grass and reinstall the Omlet fence around the whole set up. (As you can see from the photos, it’s about time to move the coop, run and fencing to fresh grass.)
Let me know what you think. Do any of y’all have a similar coop?
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