Well! how many chickens will fit?.

[aran]

yep point well taken. I guess my birds have such a large run/pen to enjoy that they dont spend anytime except at night to roost in the coop. I have actually been wondering if they will even lay in the nesting boxes i made!

When they are inside in the winter do they tend to snuggle up in the shavings or roost most of the time? I wonder if i could build them a little covered run for the winter....hmmm my wife is going to kill me if i suggest building anything else!

 

[ChicksinBoise]

Quote:
That's like saying all the space where we don't sit on a couch/chair, in a living room is wasted space.

 

[Southern28Chick]

That's like saying all the space where we don't sit on a couch/chair, in a living room is wasted space.

That's not at all what Aran was saying.

I know what you mean Aran, we build these big houses for our chicks and they stay outside all day and only go into the house at night to roost. My chickens are never on the floor of the house. They're either outside in the yard or up on the roosts. Even if they go inside because of rain they just jump up to the roof where the roost are.

Aran,
Where's that first small house that you show on your thread in the coop section? I didn't see that in your picture of you newer house and run.​

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Maybe my chickens are the exception, but when I've walked into the coop during bad weather, there are chickens on the coop floor. It's like walking onto a house full of people that are doing all different things. A couple might be roosting, somebody might be laying, but others are eating, drinking, wandering around, scratching in the litter, standing around, dust bathing or even lounging in the shavings. Mine use the whole coop. If it's a nice day outside, they're outside. If it's horrible outside, they're inside.

When the high for the day is well below zero, they spend more time indoors and wait for it to get warmer. When there's a foot or more of snow outside the pophole, they wait for somebody to come shovel it. Until then, they do their usual chicken activities, inside.

Other than the idiosyncrasies of individual chickens, I don't know which factors effect how active chickens are in the coop. I always figured that in places with better weather, the chickens would be outside most of the time. Our coop has big windows and we've always used supplemental lighting during winter. In a darker coop, I would think chickens would be much less active. We've also always had their food and water inside. We've never had a covered run, although I'm thinking about that for the future, like a little porch for rainy days. It would cut down on the shoveling, too. As it is, it's either brave the elements or hang out in the coop. I usually start brooding in the house and finish up in the chicken housing. Maybe brooding in the coop makes them more conditioned to using the coop as a living space, instead of just a sleeping space. From my experience, it seems odd that other people's chickens would roost all day, if they weren't outside.

 

[Southern28Chick]

My chickens don't roost all during the day, they stand on the roost during storms but other than that they're outside all day long and only come in to sleep.

 

[aran]

trisha...you took my point exactly. The red coop is the newer one that I bought along with all the chainlink fencing and the ugly litle plywood one with the smaller run is the old one that i built.

 

[aran]

my chickens are out of the coop at sunup and go back into the coop to roost at sundown...same each night. I always check on them and close up the coop after they go in so i know apart from a couple of small frizzle cochins that the rest are roosting off the ground . I also made a small area (probably 4x6feet) within the run out of old wood in an A shape and the floor is covered in straw...they do most of their dust bathing in there, but again none of them sleep in there at night.