Chicken Coop Features NOT To Forget (8 Things To Consider)
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- Опубліковано 20 тра 2024
- Since building 5+ chicken coops, we've learned what can make (or BREAK) a chicken coop. Click "SHOW MORE" for more resources below!
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We're not experts, so we always recommend talking to the pros for the best advice. This post and comments below contain affiliate links, which may lead to a commission if purchased. This comes at no extra cost to you. Thanks!
Use linoleum to protect your floor. Especially if doing deep litter or keeping water in your coop. We have a sheet of scrap linoleum covering the whole bottom and about 4 inches up all sides to create a sort of tub to hold the shavings. It will help keep the floor of your coop from rotting out.
That's such a good idea and I'm curious to ask how it has worked for you! The interwebs told me the floor could rot by trapping moisture underneath the linoleum, but it does seem like it would be so much easier to scrape deep litter / poop off of linoleum! Has the plywood /OSB under your linoleum stayed dry for you? Thank you!
If you're in a humid environment, eventually any floor that is made out of wood, protected or not, is going to rot, the good news is you will get about 3 to 4 years before thinking of changing it. My elevated coop, that I can stand up in 😂has a steel reinforced concrete floor tilled in porcelain tile that looks like old barn wood that is 100% water proof and poop 💩 proof, My chicken bunker once finished will be the ultimate chicken coop lol.
The automatic chicken door is so wonderful.
@@katrina7238epoxy. Seal the wood up good or spend extra cash on ground contact wood and any cut spots treat the wood.
You are such a breath of fresh air. Wonderful personality!
The first coop I had was a "walk-in". It was an old tack room that we converted. It had its pros and cons. The 2 main reasons that I now have an elevated one with a big door is 1) walking on the chicken poop and then potentially tracking it back to other places. I did have a pair of coop shoes (shoes I only wore in the coop) so maybe I was just paranoid. 2) I injured my back years ago and bending to shovel or rake the litter out caused my back to "go out" several times. In my new coop, the doors open at waist level so no bending is involved. I just use a rake to pull the litter out when we change it twice a year. I 200% agree with #3. Can't stress ventilation enough. Just make sure that you don't have drafts blowing RIGHT on your chicks. Our first nesting boxes were old Tidy Cat litter buckets. Just cut off half the lid and voila - worked perfectly.
Did you buy your coop from somewhere or build it from plans? I'm looking for this exact type of coop to save my back!
I enjoy your podcasts, my first consideration was making sure I went almost double on area size requirements. Finally done after today with coop and run. If I can find an email of yours where I can send pics or a video when I'm done painting. 51 years I waited to get chickens and at 7 weeks old they're already spoiled rotten.
My family and I are starting our chicken journey and your videos and channel have been so helpful. Thank you!
I enjoyed your comment about a walk in coop. Our flock of 21 chickens is in what was built as a horse stall. Has good protection from the elements and has great ventilation.
Great coop instructions. We bought the instructions off Etsy and tweaked a few things for our space and added some of our own ideas, but it was very helpful not to have to do it all from scratch. We probably used 90% of it. Added a roof that opens for easier cleaning, changed the placement of the doors for our space. Really great coop and instructions!
I love watching your videos! You give such straight forward information and try to your best to address as many issues as possible. Thank you! We don't have chickens (yet) as I need to find out if & how many we are allowed. One nbr a few houses up had some a few years back but her coop has been empty since then. We have a 12' 45-60° incline along our small back yard. Would chickens be ok with an access to a run that was alongside & under the coop on the incline?
Many Blessings from Deborah in West Virginia!
Make that floor and big door opening a little higher than your wheelbarrow. Make it so you can get your wheelbarrow back UNDER the ledge. Then you can just drag the litter out.
We LOVE our OverEZ Large size coop. VERY pricey but the install and quality was very good and allowed us to get our chickens even faster with the time saved from having to build from scratch
If you use an elevated coop, make sure it is high enough to get under. If your chickens start laying under the coop, you need to be able to access them. It’s amazing how small of a space they can fit into.
My understanding is 1 nest box per 3 chickens. That has worked well for me. But I only have 8 hens. Thank you for the info. I had built my coop off of one of your raised designs and thankfully I met all the check boxes. :)
I have chickens that are about to start laying so they will be getting layer feed. I also have sum 5 week old chicks ive been introducing into the new flock and will be in the coop permanently next week. So how do I keep the lil chicks outt the layer feed and vice versa. Also luv the videos been a fan for a while you have helped me out alot from getting ready to get my chicks to there coop to being big girls so thanks for all the help
That waterer in a cubby hole is just genius we like the little giant auto waterers.
This video was really helpful, thanks.
With deep litter do you add new material on top and leave or do you mix in new material and sort of churn like a compost?
As always great info!
Excellent video!
Roost. About six months ago I put up a 2x6 with an 18" sheet of plywood attached to the bottom to collect poop.
I scrape it off every two or three days.
Coop stays much much cleaner and use far less bedding.
Aerial protection
I have no idea what the poultry stuff costs, but deer fence is likely about the same. Menards has it priced at $50 for a 7x100 foot section.
This was so helpful! Thank you!
Collevting fresh eggs everyday is the best bonus of keeping chickens. I call our youngest the chicken farmer so his more invested in daily chicken care.
Do you have to adjust your chicken guard door from time to time?
I have the issue where my chicken guard door is only opening half and when the door closes i can pull the string down half way while the door is completely closed.
This means i have to recalibrate the door every week or 2. Any advice on this?
Cool! Thank you!
How big is you white coop and how many chickens do you have in it and how do you like it I'm looking at building one
I have one of the Hen Gear boxes. It is well built, well designed, and looks good. I also have an elevated nest box that's built into the coop. But my girls prefer to just make a nest in the corner of the coop, and lay their eggs there. Ugh... Since they're happy and the eggs are clean. go for it girls.
That's what mine did. 😂 They rejected their nesting boxes and use the corners of the coop. I only have a small backyard flock so it's not a big deal.
I purposely placed my chicken coop where it would be out of the wind in the winter and out of direct sunlight in the summer. It has made a huge difference in caring for my chickens. It was -7 here last week with a -20 windchill. This summer will have a few weeks of over 100°. but the placement of my coop helps with the most severe weather.
hi, i cant see the plans anywhere!
great build!
I have both traditional nest boxes with sawdust from our mill (not fine saw dust) and roll away nest boxes. The disadvantage to the roll away boxes is that in very cold weather the eggs in the roll away boxes will freeze faster than the eggs in the nest boxes with bedding and hens laying repeatedly in them. So if you can't get out frequently to collect the eggs in very cold weather you will have more frozen eggs.
Automatic chicken door. Have you had any trouble with the door not opening in very cold temperatures? Ours stopped working when the temperature hit -20
Thanks good tips
We’re new at having chickens… we have 6 hens and 3 boxes and last week had been the first week that all 6 have layed one egg each a day. I’ve gone out to 2 broken eggs , not sure what happened but I cleaned the mess up promptly so as not to encourage that behavior. This morning I opened the nest box lid and had 2 hens in one box, don’t know what was going on there..no egg fatalities today… I had to go out 4 times because they don’t all lay at once… I wasn’t sure if they should all have their own box. Thanks for all the videos and information! 😊
How is the water cubby working?🤔 Is there less splashing and spill on the floor/deep litter area? I’d like to build one but would like to know if it was a successful alternative for you.
Also, do you keep water inside AND outside at the same time during the day? Or only inside in the winter?
Thanks for your help! ( I hope you see this comment😊)
We have an amazing metal food feeder with a lid that opens when the chickens stand on it. It keeos food protected and contained in one place. Chickens love it but do need to be older and heavier.
We've built two coops so far, both elevated, but we still covered most of the runs, so they don't have to stay under the coop in hot sun or heavy rain, as we get both often here in Tennessee. Only real issue was I didn't check every dimension of the plans we used for the first one which led to quite a bit of modifying to work and on one wall throwing out the dimensions and doing the best we could. Second coop I pretty much just modified from a set of plans to meet our needs for new silkies and it came out much better and secure. Door is too small for me to get through but the kids can get up in there with them when they want. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I put too much ventilation in that one for winters, which can get below freezing at times. Our main flock suffered a few frostbit combs when it got down in single digits out of nowhere before we wrapped the coop up in a tarp but were good after that. Thanks for the info!
Did you have ventilation along the top on all 4 sides?🤔 I’m planning my coop and have that in my plans. Hmmm🤔
We are building our first coop now and we are trying to figure out the ventilation. With the vents being open all the time we are wondering how the rain and snow stays out. Thank you for any info! 😊🐣
We put our permanently open vents under the roof overhang. Keeps out all the precipitation. Then we have two window style vents we leave open unless it's storming bad or winter.
@@ThesmartestTemthank you! 😊
We tried the hen gear rollaway box but they wouldn’t go near it! Plus it looks so small and we’ve got some big gals. We were going on vacation and thought it would help out the chicken sitter, but a waste of money for us.
If the coop is walk in and even insulated, do you think in cold climates it would be colder for the hens.We do not heat our coop.
What kind of chicken is that gold one on the screen with your #1 at the 1:45 mark. She's pretty. 😊
We found that one box is what worked for ours. Its 4 feet wide, they fought over individual boxes, 2 or 3 wanted it at the same time. We ended up having to get rid of them in town and take them to my moms, they were so noisy and making neighbors mad.
Really love this coop. Thank you for this video very helpful revision for us. We have 2 old hens and today adopted another 6 chicks and wanted to rethink and make sure it will all be ready for them in a few weeks. Today just need to find a warmth heater. I was watching another video of yours and i had set up the same box so seems we are on track. I forget how long do chicks need extra warmth?? I will keep investigating all things chickens. Thank you and keep posting.
Can it have a flat roof? My biggest issue is trying to cut the angle to make it higher on the front of the roof. I’ve having giant issues building a coop and if the roof could be flat, that would help me so much! I’m 67 and hubs is sick and I have to do this by myself. Any thoughts?
If you live anywhere that gets any amount of rain, you do not want a flat roof or else any precipitation will collect on the roof and damage it. If you get snow, it can get heavy enough to straight up collapse your roof. There are resources online and on youtube for calculating roof pitch and how to build it.
I have a 4'x8' sheet of Aluminum for the floor ❤️
This coop looks like ours and then we fenced around it to extend the free raange but contained space for them. We keep the coop open all the time.
Moisture in the coop during winter comes from chicken droppings.
Auto doors and rolling egges things honestly take the fun out from having chikens sometimes even the water dishes i mean going evry morning to feed and water them also put them back in the coop just what makes having chikens special so please people consider having chikens the traditional way❤
You mentioned a couple of things I haven't had luck with, I bought a chicken guard extreme with the self locking door, the door is horrible, I get door errors all the time, I eventually had to disconnect the door, Chicken guard changed their design because reputable businesses like Carolina coops stopped selling these expensive garbage doors. Another crappie chicken item that doesn't work well is those plastic self filling cup feeders, I also don't like the plastic peck feeders because that's not how chickens drink water in the wild, just imagine yourself smashing your teeth against a metal object to drink water lol. I researched a full year before building my coop, it has a ton of features that work great, the 2 biggest failures have been the chicken guard door and the plastic cup feeders, I have switched to stainless steel commercial animal waterers, I've tweak them to make them even better.
I love your hand house. I'm getting ready to transfer a sixteen foot by eight foot snowmobile trailer in two a mobile henhouse coop.
I had basically a doggy door with a carpet scrap, we had to enlarge because the wether i kept in the run liked to sleep inside with his flock... He kept predators away, including snakes
You need enrichment that's essential too
Dude your shoulders look great
Also why is one of my white hens damaging just ONE of my brown eggs every day.We have 6 hens 3 leghorns and 3 Isa brown .One year old in August.
Put a fake hard egg 🥚 and hopefully it stops damaging the eggs
🙏🏾🇺🇸💜
👍🙋♂️
All our hens use one nest box lol.
How many hens do you have? The rule is around 4-5 hens per nesting box.
Thats a chicken sedan, it has two doors.
Sedans have 4 doors 😅
Almost didnt recognize you. Much prettier natural.
She always looks natural. What’s your point? 🤷🏽♀️