Rodrad
Songster
I am planning to build a small chicken coop. I read the article on the ventilation by Patandchicken(?) and it is a great article.
I live in Columbus, IN and the summers can be in a week here and there quite hot and humid with temps over 90 F degrees. In winter (it is southern Indiana) days are around freezing or in twenties but again for a week or so it can go down to close to zero degree.
i just want to add info about chicken coop ventilation I gathered from my neighbor down the road. He had up to 40 chickens in the coop size 12’x8’. So the area may be on smaller size (2.4 ft2/chicken), typically it is recommended 2-3 and evening 4 ft2/chicken.
Well here is the specific about his ventilation which he confirmed worked great over many years he had chickens.
His winter total ventilation area was 4.8 ft2 (having grills on two walls but not in the area of roosting). The grills were all fairly high, so there was not direct draft over the roosting area. This calculates to be: 0.5 ft2/ 10 ft2 of floor space or 0.12 ft2/ chicken.
He kept pine shavings on the floor and replaced it fairly often.
In the summer he used a fan which was sucking inside air out.
I plan to build the coop using 0.5 ft2 / 10 ft2 floor area, but I will have close to 3 ft2 floor area per chicken.
If anybody has a good experience with ventilation area in similar climate I would like to hear about it.
I live in Columbus, IN and the summers can be in a week here and there quite hot and humid with temps over 90 F degrees. In winter (it is southern Indiana) days are around freezing or in twenties but again for a week or so it can go down to close to zero degree.
i just want to add info about chicken coop ventilation I gathered from my neighbor down the road. He had up to 40 chickens in the coop size 12’x8’. So the area may be on smaller size (2.4 ft2/chicken), typically it is recommended 2-3 and evening 4 ft2/chicken.
Well here is the specific about his ventilation which he confirmed worked great over many years he had chickens.
His winter total ventilation area was 4.8 ft2 (having grills on two walls but not in the area of roosting). The grills were all fairly high, so there was not direct draft over the roosting area. This calculates to be: 0.5 ft2/ 10 ft2 of floor space or 0.12 ft2/ chicken.
He kept pine shavings on the floor and replaced it fairly often.
In the summer he used a fan which was sucking inside air out.
I plan to build the coop using 0.5 ft2 / 10 ft2 floor area, but I will have close to 3 ft2 floor area per chicken.
If anybody has a good experience with ventilation area in similar climate I would like to hear about it.