I found it easiest to align the walls of my coop with these poles or posts and work off of those. Most pole barns have poles that make up the exterior walls every 8’ on center. And if we ever do need to keep them indoors then we open up the full barn to them. I realize we exceed that a bit with 50 chickens, but they have freedom to roam all throughout the property during the day. At a minimum, plan for 3-4 square feet per chicken in your coop. Our 8’ x 16’ coop footprint feels like plenty of space for the 50 or so chickens we currently have considering they’re only in there to sleep, eat, drink, and lay.īut, if you don’t plan to give your chickens access to outdoors, that same space might feel tight for even 20 chickens. So most of their time is spent outside foraging and dust bathing under bushes. We knew we wanted to free range our chickens. Will your chickens free range? If not, do you also need to consider building a run for your chickens outside of the barn so they have access to outdoors and sunlight? Knowing your desired laying flock size and how you will be raising them will determine a lot. And don’t forget to size your door wide enough to fit a wheel barrow in to clean out the coop! Size What’s the best door location to make life simple with daily chores. But other features, like a door to your coop, will be permanent and require some forethought. The inside layout of the coop with nesting boxes, roost, and room for food and water doesn’t need to be set in stone. How will the coop interact with other activities going on in the barn? What is the warmest spot of the barn? What will my chickens access to outside look like? Will they have sunlight and ventilation? Will I be able to bring materials in and out of the coop? Spend time in your barn thinking through and envisioning the best location for your coop and how it will effect the flow of traffic within your barn. This both acted as a foundation for the coop and has kept predators out! Location/Layout But that’s a big undertaking! What I did was dug a trench where the walls of the coop would sit and lined the trench with concrete blocks. The ideal would be to dig out the entire footprint of the coop about a foot, line the underside with hardware cloth, then fill back in on top of it. Many predators can dig under the coop and get in. Some predators can tear through chicken wire when at ground level. Note that if you do plan to keep your walls open and bring the chicken wire all the way to the ground, you may want to consider hardware cloth in place of chicken wire – at least along the base. On my coop, I built a 2’ or 4’ high partial wall covered with plywood and then used chicken wire to secure the walls the rest of the way up to the ceiling. You can just use plywood, boards, or metal panels for a solid top. All 6 sides should be secure: top, bottom, and the four sides. Predator proofing your coop is always the first thing to think about with any coop design. So, we went for it and have been so happy with the decision! Chicken Coop Inside Barn – What to Think Through Before Buildingīefore we get to the How To, it’s important to plan out your coop so your birds are safe and have everything they need, and you are happy long term with your coop. But there was ample space in the rest of the barn that I mainly used for storage. About 1/3 of it is used as a stall for animals. Maybe a chicken tractor with laying boxes that we could pull around? But we had around 25 chickens with plans to expand in the future. And would the county require a permit or extra taxes? But that too was a significant project and I wasn’t quite ready to commit to where would be best to build a permanent structure. Those cute, standalone coops would certainly be nice. The only problems were, 1) we didn’t have a truck or tractor to move it, and 2) it would be a pretty significant project requiring both a trailer and lots of building materials. Meanwhile our chicks were getting big and we needed to build something! The John Suscovich chicken tractor worked out perfectly for our meat chickens.īut, when it came to a coop for our layers, there were almost too many options and I was getting overwhelmed. Starting entirely from scratch we built a brooder, filled it with both broiler and layer chicks, then needed to build both a chicken tractor for the meat chickens and a coop for the layers. Our first spring on our homestead was ambitious. Why We Built A Chicken Coop Inside Our Pole Barn
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