Picking a Chicken Coop

Okay, our chickens are ordered and are set to arrive March 26th! Let’s take a look what our long terms plans are for when they become adults.

First up, the coop. We actually picked out our coop before we even thought about ordering chickens. The size, shape and style of the coop would all factor into what types of chickens we could have and the number of chickens that would fit comfortably. Most setups consist of two different areas. One is the coop where our ladies will lay their eggs (in nesting boxes) and be shut in at night (or during snow storms!) to keep extra safe and warm. The second is the run or yard. This is the area where they will eat and drink and hang out in during the daylight hours.

Both the run and the coop size factors into how many chickens you can keep safely and comfortably. Too many in too small of a place, will mean fighting for access to resources like water, food and just give the chickens a general sense of grumpiness cause no long likes to be crowded. This can lead to fighting or feather plucking due to the stress.

The other factor to consider is whether chickens will be allowed to free range during the day. Free range chickens are those that are allowed outside of their coop during the day to a much larger, oftentimes unfenced, area to do what chickens do best, forage for food bits.

There are a lot of pros to letting your birds do this:

• It keeps them healthier. More space, more variation in diet, more natural foraging behavior.
• It keeps them entertained. They can hunt, peck and wander about exploring like they would in the wild.
• It helps prevent them from picking on each other. If one chicken is a jerk, the others will simply just avoid hanging around said jerk. More space means more room to do so.

But there are a fair amount of cons as well:

• Higher risk for being killed or maimed by predators. Birds, especially those loose, are very low on the evolutionary food chain. Outside with no fencing, they are easily prey for both land predators (dogs, coyotes, etc) and air predators (hawks, eagles, etc). If left out they will be eaten eventually by something. So you’ll need to prepare for nature playing out that course.
• Escaping. While, interestingly enough most chickens won’t wander too far from the coop. There is always the oddball adventurer who could wander off and find themselves in trouble. This could be especially an issue if you live nearby neighbors or in an more urban environment.
• Eggs outside the nest box. Free range chickens can make egg collection interesting. While most will still use the nest box, a few will find a lovely hidey-hole in some grass or comfy area and insist on laying their eggs there instead of somewhere more convenient for collection.

We have talked about doing some free ranged, supervised when we are home, but decided to plan as though we were not going to free range. This would mean buying a larger sized run to ensure adequate spacing for the hens during the day. Additionally we plan on fencing in a larger pasture area for our future alpacas (more on this in later blog posts) and foresee the possibility of allowing some free range in this area at a later date.

If you search for “chicken coop” online, about a million results show up. Many of these are fairly inexpensive but don’t offer as much protection or ease of care (for us) as others. We looked at some of the more inexpensive options, but from the reviews we read online many were made from poor quality materials which only lasted a few years before needing to be replaced. We also read that many of them became dirty and smelly easily as they were difficult to clean. So we prepared a list of criteria for what we wanted in a coop and run:

• People sized doors. We wanted to be able to walk in to see the ladies. Stand fully up to be able to easily sweep and fill water/food dispensers.
• Easy people height nesting boxes. We wanted easy open nesting boxes accessible from outside the run to allow us to pop in and grab the eggs without having to wade through chickens.
• Easy to clean. We wanted a coop that again was at more waist level height to allow for easy cleaning and changing of the bedding materials within.
• Protection from predators. A coop that was off the ground (adding more space to the run). Completely fenced in area with wire mesh and not chicken wire (which allow smaller predators like rats, or weasels through). And a roof to protect them from flying predators like hawks or eagles.
• Durable. We wanted something that would last. Stand the Iowa brutal cold winters and tropical rain forest hot and humid summers. With the ability to seal everything up (with a few ventilation holes) in the winter and the ability to open everything up in the summer (with metal mesh on all windows) to keep everyone cool.

We shopped around and looked even at building our own. But we are not carpenters, and while many of the coop designs were simple enough to build they required access to tools which we did not possess and would quickly add to the total cost of the coop if they became required. So buying something either preformed or ready to assemble was our next best option.

We decided on a company based out of North Carolina called Carolina Coops. These folks were highly reviewed, met all our requirements above, and had coops the size we wanted for our future ladies. They also were built to order, allowing further customization and fun options! But damn, that price tag had a bit of sticker shock.

Additionally, we watched a great many of their videos on youtube highlighting the care and construction of their coops. They also had some great videos talking about why they designed them the way they did and reviews with their customers on why they liked them. They seemed to put a lot of care, thought and quality into their coops and that sealed the deal in knowing it was going to be a good long term investment for us and our hens!

We ordered the following options for our American Coop:

• A 4 x 6 hen house
• A 6 x 18 chicken run
• A three box egg hutch
• HDPE (think thick plastic cutting board) hen house liner
• A human sized run door
• A coop door (closable from outside the run)
• A run door (to easily allow for free range if we decide to do so in the future).

Chicken coops are sized by how many hens will fit comfortably on their roosting bars (because chickens like to nest in “trees”). This coop is sized at roughly 1 ft per bird allowing for up to 12 hens to sleep at night. So we would need two six foot roosting bars in there

The run sizing is a bit different. And coop size and run size both need to be considered. Recommended standard is 7 sq ft per bird. Our total area for the run (since they are allowed under the coop itself) is 108 sq ft. This results in up to 15 hens at max capacity.

As I mentioned in the last post, we didn’t want to max out our coop from the get go, to allow for more growth in the future. So we opted for getting 10 baby chicks (see our last week post on Picking our Chicks) to start with and see how we like it from there. We also picked smaller breeds of standard chickens (most on the 4-6 lb range, vs the 7-9 lb range) to allow them even more room to run around.

We placed the order, our bank accounts weeped. We are excited though. Our coop will take about a week in the shop and then be on it’s way to Iowa on a pallet for pickup. How will we get a pallet back to our home with only two mid-sized SUVs. Eh, we’ll figure it out. Stay tuned for more!