Posted: 4/11/2016 6:39:34 PM EDT
|
So we have had chickens for 2 years now. We started with a batch of day old babies and a prefab coop kit. Initially we just used fence netting around it and that didn't work out well (it was inside our chain link fence). We lost two hens to hawks. We put in 9 4x4s and put heavy plastic netting over it which solved the hawk problem. We still lost a few more birds to coyotes when they were free ranging outside the run and outside the chain link fence. So we are down to 3 hens and a rooster now. We have a blue Ameraucana Rooster and a splash (blue) hen who lays blue eggs plus a White Rock and a Blue Andalusian hens. We get 3 eggs a day most days from them.
The Ameraucana hen goes broody each spring and just started doing it this week, so we are going to let her hatch some fertilized eggs. I picked up 7 Black Copper Marans and Blue Copper Marans eggs today and tomorrow will be picking up 10 Ameraucana (blue eggers) and 2 Easter Eggers (pink) eggs tomorrow. I plan to let the hen hatch about 8 of them and put the rest in an incubator. We are also getting 15 Welsummer chicks (females) in a week or so. I will be keeping 5 or so of those. All in all I hope to keep about 10 of the female chicks that live and possibly a roo depending on what we get. The extra females will be sold or gifted out and the roos I can't sell will be doing the KFC thing. So, here is where I would like advice and ideas. Our current coop is falling apart and is only big enough for about 8 hens comfortably. I plan to build a new custom coop from the ground up. I would like to stay at 8x12 or so in size but I can wiggle up or down. I want to divide the coop into two areas, one for storage of food, materials etc, and then the nesting boxes and perches in the next room and the chicken entrance in that room as well. My plan so far is to have an entrance on the short side (8 foot) into an 8 x 5 room with shelves on the left wall with room underneath for brooder boxes and on the right side a table with storage area underneath for food bins/cans etc. A screen door exits on the opposite wall from the outside door into the nesting and roosting area. Nesting boxes on the left (I am thinking 4 or 5 boxes) down lower with "stadium seating" type roosts on the right with a poop hammock underneath. Finally, on the opposite side of the screen door will be an exit on the other end of the coop. This will mainly be used to clean out litter. Here are the features we plan to incorporate: - Deep litter area in the nesting/roosting area - Poop hammock under the roosts - Automated timer controlled chicken door (eventually) - 2 windows in coop area, 1 in utility area - 2-3 vents (1 per wall) for coop area - Wired for electricity - Single sloped roof, no trusses - Based on concrete deck footers - Feeder and water will be outside under a covered roof off the side of the coop. - The outside run will be about 3x the size of the coop So, what do I need to add? Anything I missed? How many footers should I use for 8x12? I will post some pics of the plan so far when I get them scanned up. HaM |
|
Quoted:
So we have had chickens for 2 years now. We started with a batch of day old babies and a prefab coop kit. Initially we just used fence netting around it and that didn't work out well (it was inside our chain link fence). We lost two hens to hawks. We put in 9 4x4s and put heavy plastic netting over it which solved the hawk problem. We still lost a few more birds to coyotes when they were free ranging outside the run and outside the chain link fence. So we are down to 3 hens and a rooster now. We have a blue Ameraucana Rooster and a splash (blue) hen who lays blue eggs plus a White Rock and a Blue Andalusian hens. We get 3 eggs a day most days from them. The Ameraucana hen goes broody each spring and just started doing it this week, so we are going to let her hatch some fertilized eggs. I picked up 7 Black Copper Marans and Blue Copper Marans eggs today and tomorrow will be picking up 10 Ameraucana (blue eggers) and 2 Easter Eggers (pink) eggs tomorrow. I plan to let the hen hatch about 8 of them and put the rest in an incubator. We are also getting 15 Welsummer chicks (females) in a week or so. I will be keeping 5 or so of those. All in all I hope to keep about 10 of the female chicks that live and possibly a roo depending on what we get. The extra females will be sold or gifted out and the roos I can't sell will be doing the KFC thing. So, here is where I would like advice and ideas. Our current coop is falling apart and is only big enough for about 8 hens comfortably. I plan to build a new custom coop from the ground up. I would like to stay at 8x12 or so in size but I can wiggle up or down. I want to divide the coop into two areas, one for storage of food, materials etc, and then the nesting boxes and perches in the next room and the chicken entrance in that room as well. My plan so far is to have an entrance on the short side (8 foot) into an 8 x 5 room with shelves on the left wall with room underneath for brooder boxes and on the right side a table with storage area underneath for food bins/cans etc. A screen door exits on the opposite wall from the outside door into the nesting and roosting area. Nesting boxes on the left (I am thinking 4 or 5 boxes) down lower with "stadium seating" type roosts on the right with a poop hammock underneath. Finally, on the opposite side of the screen door will be an exit on the other end of the coop. This will mainly be used to clean out litter. Here are the features we plan to incorporate: - Deep litter area in the nesting/roosting area - Poop hammock under the roosts - Automated timer controlled chicken door (eventually) - 2 windows in coop area, 1 in utility area - 2-3 vents (1 per wall) for coop area - Wired for electricity - Single sloped roof, no trusses - Based on concrete deck footers - Feeder and water will be outside under a covered roof off the side of the coop. - The outside run will be about 3x the size of the coop So, what do I need to add? Anything I missed? How many footers should I use for 8x12? I will post some pics of the plan so far when I get them scanned up. HaM I am building a 8'x12' coop. We are starting this week when it dries out a little. I am going to build mine on (3) 4'x4'x12' landscape ties which will be set on 9 cinder blocks. This will allow me to build without a permit and it could be moved if necessary in the future. Since I already got the lumber, I am sort of wishing that I went a little bigger. 10'x14' or 12'x16' would be ideal for us considering that we just ordered 20 chicks. If we decide in the future to "go big" with the chickens like everything else we do, I will have to either build an extension/ second coop or start over with a bigger one. From all that I remember, we always had the food and water inside the coop. They say a minimum of 4 square ft per bird is ok but with our winters, they will spend a lot of time "cooped up" and should be afforded more space. Please update this as you make progress. |
|
Quoted:
So we have had chickens for 2 years now. We started with a batch of day old babies and a prefab coop kit. Initially we just used fence netting around it and that didn't work out well (it was inside our chain link fence). We lost two hens to hawks. We put in 9 4x4s and put heavy plastic netting over it which solved the hawk problem. We still lost a few more birds to coyotes when they were free ranging outside the run and outside the chain link fence. So we are down to 3 hens and a rooster now. We have a blue Ameraucana Rooster and a splash (blue) hen who lays blue eggs plus a White Rock and a Blue Andalusian hens. We get 3 eggs a day most days from them. The Ameraucana hen goes broody each spring and just started doing it this week, so we are going to let her hatch some fertilized eggs. I picked up 7 Black Copper Marans and Blue Copper Marans eggs today and tomorrow will be picking up 10 Ameraucana (blue eggers) and 2 Easter Eggers (pink) eggs tomorrow. I plan to let the hen hatch about 8 of them and put the rest in an incubator. We are also getting 15 Welsummer chicks (females) in a week or so. I will be keeping 5 or so of those. All in all I hope to keep about 10 of the female chicks that live and possibly a roo depending on what we get. The extra females will be sold or gifted out and the roos I can't sell will be doing the KFC thing. So, here is where I would like advice and ideas. Our current coop is falling apart and is only big enough for about 8 hens comfortably. I plan to build a new custom coop from the ground up. I would like to stay at 8x12 or so in size but I can wiggle up or down. I want to divide the coop into two areas, one for storage of food, materials etc, and then the nesting boxes and perches in the next room and the chicken entrance in that room as well. My plan so far is to have an entrance on the short side (8 foot) into an 8 x 5 room with shelves on the left wall with room underneath for brooder boxes and on the right side a table with storage area underneath for food bins/cans etc. A screen door exits on the opposite wall from the outside door into the nesting and roosting area. Nesting boxes on the left (I am thinking 4 or 5 boxes) down lower with "stadium seating" type roosts on the right with a poop hammock underneath. Finally, on the opposite side of the screen door will be an exit on the other end of the coop. This will mainly be used to clean out litter. Here are the features we plan to incorporate: - Deep litter area in the nesting/roosting area - Poop hammock under the roosts - Automated timer controlled chicken door (eventually) - 2 windows in coop area, 1 in utility area - 2-3 vents (1 per wall) for coop area - Wired for electricity - Single sloped roof, no trusses - Based on concrete deck footers - Feeder and water will be outside under a covered roof off the side of the coop. - The outside run will be about 3x the size of the coop So, what do I need to add? Anything I missed? How many footers should I use for 8x12? I will post some pics of the plan so far when I get them scanned up. HaM I love the storage room idea. Been considering dividing my own coop that way (it's 8 X 10)Are you doing the poop hammock to make harvest of the droppings easier (for fertilizer)? With the deep litter, I have never needed anything like that. But the litter lasts a long time, so can't be turned into fertilizer as quickly as if it were just droppings. (You probably already know this, but the droppings need composted before use on a garden, because chicken litter is extremely hot.) 
ETA: I also agree with having food and water inside the coop as well as outside. If you can have it only one place, I'd have it inside. That way you can feed/water in foul weather more easily. One thing about setting it on the deck footers--consider how high off the ground it will be. If it's just a little off the ground, that makes it a very attractive rodent nesting location (ask me how I know  ) If I had it to do over, I would raise my coop a little higher to make that "crawlspace" easier to access and less attractive to rodents.
YMMV with that, and you may have different needs. But "under the henhouse" seems like the rats' fav place to live, and I don't feed those rats, I swear. Our feed is not available to them. |
| Great suggestions. The poop hammock is mainly to make cleanup easier. I may kick the size out a bit if I plan to put the food and water inside. Right now I am watering from a 5 gallon bucket with nipples on the bottom. Feed is a 20 gallon trash can with 4 PVC elbows allowing access. With our fairly mild weather, the birds are only inside at night on even the coldest days most of the time. I will do pics and stuff as we progress. |
|
Poop hammock, I like the idea, would love to see pictures when you get it set up. I use the deep litter method also, it would be nice to not be tossing litter into the compost pile as often as I'm doing. Mine is 8x12 and is on 6 footers tied into sonotubes filled with concrete. I built it so the birds have 18" of clearance, it gives them a place to duck into when a hawk gets too close. When I built it I had a bunch of 2x6's which I used as floor joists, and doubled up 3/8" plywood, offsetting the pieces so no seams on top of each other. I chose to overbuild it because I've got raccoon, coyotes, porcupines, and weasels in the area, they've all tried but no one but chickens and me get into the coop. |
|
Quoted:
I lined the floor with welded wire fence, and then covered with sand. so nothing can dig in. <a href="http://s109.photobucket.com/user/trip157/media/20140919_173900_zpsglwim6n3.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/trip157/20140919_173900_zpsglwim6n3.jpg</a> storage room to the front, coop behind the chicken wire <a href="http://s109.photobucket.com/user/trip157/media/20141024_161752_zpsm0ecph66.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/trip157/20141024_161752_zpsm0ecph66.jpg</a> power <a href="http://s109.photobucket.com/user/trip157/media/20141024_172413_zpsvd8iofrl.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/trip157/20141024_172413_zpsvd8iofrl.jpg</a> poop board <a href="http://s109.photobucket.com/user/trip157/media/20141025_144524_zpsjrtzrgzj.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/trip157/20141025_144524_zpsjrtzrgzj.jpg</a> <a href="http://s109.photobucket.com/user/trip157/media/20141024_161859_zpsmmb6pktk.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/trip157/20141024_161859_zpsmmb6pktk.jpg</a> What a great henhouse! 
|
Win a FREE Membership!
Sign up for the ARFCOM weekly newsletter and be entered to win a free ARFCOM membership. One new winner* is announced every week!
You will receive an email every Friday morning featuring the latest chatter from the hottest topics, breaking news surrounding legislation, as well as exclusive deals only available to ARFCOM email subscribers.