| Notes from Tom:
I'm going to deal only with the structural aspects of the coop. The original coop was, to all intents and purposes, built as per the drawings supplied by Murray McMurray the only difference being in the height and size of the outside run. While I am on the subject of the run, I should mention that raccoons, dog packs, and rats, in that order, will probably be your worst predator problems. (Foxes may take one chicken home for dinner, but a raccoon will gleefully kill half you chickens in one night as will a couple of dogs.) So, I recommend that the foundations of both the run and the coop be surrounded by 1/4" hardware cloth, three foot wide, buried 18" - 24" in the ground and extending above ground to overlap with 'galvanized after weaving' one-inch chicken wire for about a foot in the run. The rest of the run should be of that chicken wire. The top of the run can be chicken wire as well (to protect from hawks and racoons), but it would be better for it to have a covered roof, since many of the parasites that infect chickens come from wild bird droppings. The drawings that McMurray provide are designed to house 25 medium size (around 3 lb) chickens. That coop could probably house as many as 40 bantams and as few as 18 Jersey Giants. The new coop is basically a Siamese twin of two McMurray coops with a common storage area. Our new coop is 20' x 8' with each coop being 7 1/2' x 8' and a 5' x8' storage area. We can get away with that small a storage area because we have the storage area in the other coop, ten feet away. Some other differences from the McMurray plans: Cover the window openings with 1/4" hardware cloth and forget about screening - all the screening does is clog up with dust and reduce air circulation, which the chickens need. Make the dropping pit wall (between the dropping pit and the open area) out of a piece of plywood or Luan, not out of chicken wire. Also, make the inside of the dropping pit have as few nooks, crannies, and ledges as possible to make it easier to clean. We put one bale of wood shavings into the dropping pit (one into the other compartment), stir the droppings pit weekly, and change wood shavings about once every 6 weeks in the summer and 8 weeks in the winter. Use rigid foam insulation, not fiberglass wool, in the walls and ceiling. This reduces the insulation's utility as a bug haven. Be sure that there is interior covering (plywood/Luan) over the insulation, since chickens will eat Styrofoam and it makes the eggs taste weird. If you insulate the coop, you will not need any ancillary heat, even in very cold weather, provided the windows and hatches are reasonably tight. Use 1" x 2" welded fencing for the top of the dropping pit (held only by a frame on the periphery) for ease of cleaning and to avoid accumulation of droppings on the top. We built it so that the entire frame and 1x2 mesh can be removed (or tipped up) for ease of both cleaning and putting shavings into the pit. |
| Notes from Katherine:
Our new duplex coop is sized to hold about 40 chickens. They don't have much space inside the coop. This will help keep them warm in the winter when they roost together and they will have a large covered outdoor run that will be racoon, rat and hawk proof. We will put a deep layer of sand down in the run and then a layer of gravel. The idea is that chicken poop will wash down into the gravel and sand. The cover will keep wild birds from pooping on the chickens - which is a huge sorce of parasites around here. Each side of the run will have a dustbath area filled with sand & diatomaceous earth. And I'll take the flocks out to graze, like I do now, on nice days so they can scratch around the grass. Our idea is, now that we have an old coop & the new duplex, to rotate the 2 flocks between the 3 coops. That way we have one always lying fallow. We can take our time disinfecting, repainting, repairing, etc. without trying to do all that with chickens present. |
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