Venting questions:

[JackE]

Fantastic article!
JackE - have you made any changes to the original design in this booklet? If so, would it be possible to get pictures/ thoughts? And, are the windows in the lower front open in summer?

Rainer

Here's a link to my coop below. You can see a bunch of pics there, interior pics on the bottom pg4 of the link. I have made no changes to the design, other than using modern building supplies. No other changes needed, it's perfect as it is. And yes, all the windows, plus the door, are opened in the summer.



https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/445004/woods-style-house-in-the-winter

 

[Arielle]

I am likeng the WOods design and I"m thinking how to convert other coops or start from scratch to construct another one.

I have not removed some of the covers for the one I have now- the half- woods. CLosed up it is like a sauna and I can feel the moisture as I breathe in. If I don't like it, they sure don't like it. WIll be glad to get the structure finished

I did notice that when the ground was frozen the moisture level was much lower . . . now that the soils are thawed and the rainy season has come, a closed coop is not good.

As I said before flexibility to open and close windows is beneficial and provides for comfortable chickens.

 

[fourpawsfarm]

I surprised to be arguing with somebody, who claims knowledge of "Generations" with experience raising chickens, about proper coop ventilation. Below is some basic ABC type information, about the need for Year round ventilation in a coop.

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/ageng/resource/agvent.htm

I think nowadays, it's just common knowledge, that a chicken coop needs to be ventilated, year round. You go on about "Animals exposed to subzero temps will die". We are not talking about some poor lost chicken out on the tundra somewhere, exposed to all the wind and ice nature can throw at it. Yeah, I'll agree that, could be fatal. We're talking about chickens that are properly housed in a 100yr old proven design. Also, we are talking birds here, with a perfectly insulating suit of feathers. Are you going to tell me, that the wide spread use of open-air coops, throughout the northern hemisphere, with pictures and written history, was all a work of fiction? Even in modern poultry houses, broiler or layer, they ventilate the heck out of them. Do you think they just shut down the fans, and close off the shutters, in the winter? Maybe you, ought to do a little more research.

The link you provide is just some resource page at a university. It is not a scientific study addressing the issue of keeping chickens from subzero conditions. So unless you can provide an actual scientific and published study in a known scholarly journal (like Science or Nature, for example), the "you must keep the vents open in the winter" is just an opinion and one approach. However, what does not need to be addressed is what happens when subzero air hits skin. It causes frostbite.

This winter I had my own controlled study. I had two coops identical in construction. With one, all vents were wide open. With the second, the vents were open during the day and closed at sunset. Want to guess which chickens got frostbite? You guessed it, the one with the vents wide open suffered frostbite. Both coops had Cream Legbars of the same age (within a week of hatching).

Ammonia and moisture is not a problem if you keep a clean coop. Even in the winter, my coops are cleaned out weekly, just as my grandparents did.

 

[rfeyer]

That is great to hear - love to see things working - certainly there are many sides to opeel a banana, reading about Woods designs seems to have no flaws. Time will tell!

I very much appreciate all of your efforts to educate - jealous roosters? Didn't even think of that yet (could be violent, hm).

Have not looked at pics yet, JackE, but will do so this evening when I'm done iwth outdoors duties.

Thanks all!

Rainer

 

[JackE]

The link you provide is just some resource page at a university. It is not a scientific study addressing the issue of keeping chickens from subzero conditions. So unless you can provide an actual scientific and published study in a known scholarly journal (like Science or Nature, for example), the "you must keep the vents open in the winter" is just an opinion and one approach. However, what does not need to be addressed is what happens when subzero air hits skin. It causes frostbite.

This winter I had my own controlled study. I had two coops identical in construction. With one, all vents were wide open. With the second, the vents were open during the day and closed at sunset. Want to guess which chickens got frostbite? You guessed it, the one with the vents wide open suffered frostbite. Both coops had Cream Legbars of the same age (within a week of hatching).

Ammonia and moisture is not a problem if you keep a clean coop. Even in the winter, my coops are cleaned out weekly, just as my grandparents did.

I can easily ask you the same thing. Show me a "Scientific study" on the need to shut off a coop's ventilation for winter? I'd really like to see that. Your "Study" doesn't mean anything. If the coop is of a generally bad design, and opening the vents caused problems, that's just a bad design. That has absolutely no bearing, on how a properly designed open-air coop performs. Like was said before, if you have a relatively low number of birds, in a large enough building, you may avoid the problems from excessive CO2, and high humidity.
And again, open-air coops have a documented history of use in winter, even with sub-zero temps. That is not an "Opinion", That's fact.
Read the book in the link below, and educate yourself.

http://archive.org/stream/openairpoultryho00wood#page/n0/mode/2up

 

[fourpawsfarm]

As a published scientist in both of the world's most note-worthy journals, I think I know how to conduct a study. I base my opinion on science. If you expose a chicken to subzero temperatures (or any animal for that matter), then are going to be damaged. I don't need to paste studies because that is already an established fact in biology. However, challenging the fact and saying they should be in a vented coop would necessitate scientific study. But I looked in all of the databases and no such study exists. So therefore, it is an unproven theory that coops for chickens in subzero environments require ventilation.

If you wish to research this other than doing a 5 second Google search, you can instead use Google Scholar. Please note, however, that Google Scholar will only provide you with excerpts of papers and not the actual content. For that you most likely will require licenses for each journal that you are researching.

 

[centrarchid]

Fourpawsfarm,

Multiple science types communicate via this forum although few if any, including myself are experts in poultry husbandry, especially when it comes to the backyard type arrangements. All experts I am aware of deal with birds under far more controlled conditions preventing commercial and experimental flocks from experiencing the extremes we put out birds through. We are all operating off of anecdotal information and must extrapolate either from knowledge coming from commercial flocks or even other species.

I would like to see a more concerted effort exploring how chickens can be more optimally kept. This will be challenging as funding would likely be out of pocket or very low, certainly not enough to support our salaries or a post-doc.

 

[Judy]

I think we are done here.