What would you have done differently?

[Kat2141]

Wow. Read through more of Fireguy's coop. Apparently my mistake is not having a contractor in the family. His coop is amazing. I was reading about it to @Purple Rose , telling her it was wired for electricity, house door and windows, automated chicken door, he has a sink out there for clean-up, and that he set up an a/c blower - she said she wanted to live in that coop, and started making "bawk-bawk!" noises at me.

This thread does have me wondering if I'm going to be ok doing the half-height coop with more run space underneath it, or if I'm going to regret not doing a walk-in coop full height. What are pros and cons of the full height?

I love the walk-in capability. Mine is actually an unused horse stall in the corner of our barn. We closed the top off with wire for the girls, the inside walls are 4' high boards. I plan to do some remodeling in it this summer - the original roost has a "poop board" type setup but the ones I put in after I got more girls does not. I like it better with, having the droppings go to the floor is a pain. I will also try to figure out a better layout for my ramps. I have found that all of them prefer the ramps over jumping from the higher roosts. The stall is 10x10 (and has a ceiling from the hay mow floor) so there is a lot of room and they have a large run and a very large (40x60') "pasture" that was just added last year. I really like having that so I don't feel so bad about not letting them free range all of the time. Foxes got 2 of them last spring, so they don't get to free range too much anymore. I do worry a bit about the possibility of hawks because it is not covered but I've added things that they can get on and/or get under if they want to. Unfortunately it is an open area without trees and bushes so the hiding places and shady spots are all man-made.

 

[Celticdragonfly]

IMHO you will be happier if you can stand up in your coop and run and have a full size door, so you don't have to crawl through the chicken door. Seriously the full size door and being able to stand in the majority of the area is a help in cleaning, collecting eggs, etc.

Okay, you're convincing me. My daughter thinks she'd be fine with the half height, but as I pointed out to her, she won't always be there, and I'm the half crip. More expensive, but not too bad.

 

[Ursuline Chick]

Okay, you're convincing me. My daughter thinks she'd be fine with the half height, but as I pointed out to her, she won't always be there, and I'm the half crip. More expensive, but not too bad.

DH made ours out of a sheet 4 X 8 plywood with 2 X 4's to keep it from becoming wonky in the weather.

 

[Kee11]

We bought a 10 x 10 wooden shed and modified it. It is placed on a sloped part of our property, so we have a walk in coop with space underneath it for the chickens to get under to get out of the heat. I can crawl under it ( when I have to to get an errant chicken or chick that didn't go in at night) but I don't like too because it is usually snowy or muddy when a chicken decides to stay out all night.
In this coop we put in interior nest boxes ( my hubby wanted exterior nest boxes but I said no). Our other coop has exterior boxes. We only have 2 windows. I wish we had either made the windows larger or put in more of them. We have added a ventilation fan on the roof. I wish we had put poop boards in under the roosts too. We did have a friend that wired the coop for electric, so we have lights and during winter I can use a heated dog water bowl in there. In the summer, I also use an oscillating fan to get the air moving. I used a waterproofer on the floor and insulated the ceiling and walls. Mice have gotten into the walls though, so I wish I had done something that would have kept the mice out.
I wish I had an automated pop door!!Also, more ventilation would be great!

Our 2nd coop, my hubby built from scratch. It has a dirt floor. 2 large windows and a lot of narrow ventilation under the eaves. It has an attached small ( 5 ft x 5 ft or so) run. I that aspect of it!! That way when the weather is bad and we don't let them out into the fenced in chicken yard, they still get some "outside" time. One mistake that we made was that on the attached run we did not use hardware cloth. We used hog fence (or something) that has bigger wholes. We have had raccoons reach through and try to pull chickens back through the holes and have tried to grab them off the roost when they decided to sleep in the enclosed run.
Another coop we built, but have since quit using and are in the process of dismantling, was built on a lovely flat concrete pad. We thought that would be great, but we were very wrong!! The chicken droppings just stayed were they fell. Water didn't run off either. The only way to clean it was to hose it down but that made the dirt part gross & muddy. The coop smelled all the time (except in the winter when everything was too frozen to stink).

I'm mid-build on my coop (chicks 5 weeks old)... this is very helpful!!! Thanks

 

[Kee11]

Here’s another

i was just about to throw out a freezer. what a brilliant idea.

Also my first coop I had in the wrong spot on my property for prevailing winds in the summer. The coop should go where the wind WONT bring the flies and the smell in the summer. ;-)

Oh, darn... I wish I had read that about a month ago. I didn't think about the wind blowing the smell toward the house... too late, the coop is already upwind of our house, and we are still in the building phase! :-( I guess I will just have to keep it and the run super clean! Hopefully this won't turn in to an issue for us. After spending a couple of weeks setting up the run, covering it and burying the hardware cloth, it would be a huge loss to move it all.

 

[Werehen]

I can see we’re in trouble. Bought a prefab with no floor and probably not big enough. One saving grace is we plan to let the girls run around our fenced in yard during the day. Now I’m worried about pests and predators as well as whether the coop will survive winter. As to placement are we crazy to put it near the house?

 

[Sueby]

Dutch doors!! Those little buggers accost me going in & going out! It would be nice to just open the top portion & throw in some scratch peacefully.

 

[KnightsMist]

This thread does have me wondering if I'm going to be ok doing the half-height coop with more run space underneath it, or if I'm going to regret not doing a walk-in coop full height. What are pros and cons of the full height?

I don't have chickens or a coop yet, but in the months I have been reading and learning from this forum, I have never seen anyone say they wish they had made a coop shorter that they can't walk into. FWIW.

 

[debid]

I don't have chickens or a coop yet, but in the months I have been reading and learning from this forum, I have never seen anyone say they wish they had made a coop shorter that they can't walk into. FWIW.

It depends on size, though. IMO, if you can't reach every inch of the structure while standing comfortably outside of it, it should be standing height.

 

[Sarvepalli]

Poop boards... much, MUCH bigger coop... a real floor instead of an earth one... wood instead of metal on the walls... insulation... pretty much I’d throw the whole thing away and completely start over if I had the funds, space, and time, but this coop was free (scraps from my dad’s work - he’s a contractor) so there’s no change here coming in the near future!

Why wood walls instead of metal? Our coop has galvanized metal walls and floor and it works very well in terms of cleaning and keeping down mites and other insects. It has to be galvanized not the type of colored metal used for the outside of buildings. That type of metal is banned in industrial chicken farming because it puts off fumes that poison the meat. We don't eat chicken but used metal for health reasons. Mites will reside in wood.