venting in coop

[apple4]

We are now building our 6x7 coop. We live in Minnesota, plus on top of a bluff with plenty of wind. We were going to put in a roof vent and now we are having eves. My husband said he will put in eve vents on both sides, so maybe we don't need a roof vent. He said we could stuff insulation in the eves in the winter if it is too much. So the question is, do we still need a roof vent or is one better than the other. We have 6' side walls and the end walls peak in the middle so it has to be 8 or 9 feet in the middle. Thanks in advance for everyone's help. Amy

 

[CityChook]

I'm also in MN and have a 6x8 coop with 4 hens. I have a ridgecap/soffet vent system (which is what I assume you are talking about here) and I also have two vents put up in the gable. The ridgecap ventilation works well, but not well enough to be the sole form of ventilation. When we get that REALLY cold snap in January, you know - the one that gives us the -20 business, I close up the gable vents and rely solely on the ridgecap. It tends to get a little stinky in there - mild, but I like to have those gable vents open as much as possible. Since the bitter cold only lasted a week or so this winter, I never did close them up.

The eve vents will be good for cross ventilation in the summer as well as keeping the rain out, but because they are not at the peak of the roof (which is where the hot, humid air will go), I don't really think they'll be enough on their own. But depending on how big they are and how high they are (meaning, if they are by the roost and blowing cold air on your chickens while they sleep), they MAY need to be closed up when the really cold stuff hits. My guesstimation is that you're not going to put your roost at 6 ft high and those eve vents will be out of the way, but I've learned to never assume....

Hope this helps. Have fun.

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

I can't speak from too much experience because I'm still building my coop. I put vents on the north and plan on having a system to block them if needed. I'm also putting vents on the south side with no way of blocking them. When we get nasty weather it's always from the north west (but then so is the breeze in the summer). I didn't want my tools to get wet and didn't want to have to haul everything up to the garage so I cut up my camp mat and pushed them up into the eave vents (the flap door isn't installed yet). I also forgot to close the front windows of the coop! We had some serious wind with this last storm so when I saw that I had left the windows open I was not happy. To my surprise, there wasn't a drop of moisture in the coop!! The camp mat kept water from getting inside on the north, and the south was just naturally protected because of the direction of the storm.


We get terrible wind from the east but there is never any moisture associated with it. We put two people doors in the coop so that when it's blowing from the east we can enter from the west and vice versa. I just decided to design the coop to be easy to use so that this will continue to be a fun venture for all of us.

Someone had written it's better to have too many vents that you may have to close off then to not have enough where you're later having to cut holes in it to make it work. I decided this sounded like some good advice and put lots of ventilation in my coop.

 

[patandchickens]

I live an hour north of Toronto in a very windy location, so I can kind of relate. I do not personally put much stock in ridge vents for chicken coops -- they do not allow hardly any airflow if they are baffled, and even if they are baffled (but especially if they are *not*) they allow blowing snow in, which is fine for a horse barn but not so fine for a coop. Any other kind of roof vent would likely have to be closed off during the winter because of dumping too much cold air onto the chickens.

So my suggestion would be to go with the vents in the eves, but make them large and extensive (don't use store-boughten things, actually cut good-sized openings in there, like 6-12" high and the full length of the walls, right up under the roof overhangs). Your husband is right, you will want to block off the upwind side during the worst of the winter, so make sure you've planned some mechanism for doing that (rags stuffed in holes are an ok emergency measure but it is better to construct Real closures, like flaps or whatever, that won't blow out or fall down, and can be adjusted half-open).

Using a droppings board that you clean every morning will help minimize humidity in the coop when you are having ventilation 'constraints' in wintertime, as will limiting yourself to fewer chickens than you might *want* to stuff into there

Good luck, have fun,

Pat