- Jun 5, 2012
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Hello,
We're new to chickens, I've been wanting them for some time now but we just returned from a trip to Kauai where we spent a lot of time with feral chickens and have decided to take the plunge. A local (kind of) feed store has chicks through July (we'd like to get chicks because I would like to socialize them to handling) which means the pressure is on to build a coop!
I'm not super handy, neither is my boy friend, and we don't own any power tools so we were looking at either buying a pre-made coop or making something easy. We have cats and probably racoons in our neighborhood and I worry that any pre-made coop in our price range will not be predator safe.
Anyway, what we do already have in our backyard is this structure (pics below)! It's very sturdy, we will need to add a roof and make some other adjustments. The door with the latch actually opens, so it's easy access once we trim the rose bush back.
I would like some opinions on 1) whether we should cover some of the windows, the windows cover two sides and I worry that they will be too stressed out being that exposed? 2) will the slats on the non-window part let in too much breeze? Should we or can we cover them with plastic or something else? Any suggestions? We live in the San Francisco Bay Area so we don't really have weather. 3) the floor is dirt I believe, can we just cover the dirt up with substrate or should we install a different floor? We plan to build in some shelves for nesting boxes and some perches. 4) This is about 6 square feet by 6 square feet, is it enough space for 3-4 chickens? We plan to maybe knock out one of the windows and create an adjacent run and they can have access to the full yard when we are home to supervise.
Is this a viable project or should we start from scratch?
We're new to chickens, I've been wanting them for some time now but we just returned from a trip to Kauai where we spent a lot of time with feral chickens and have decided to take the plunge. A local (kind of) feed store has chicks through July (we'd like to get chicks because I would like to socialize them to handling) which means the pressure is on to build a coop!
I'm not super handy, neither is my boy friend, and we don't own any power tools so we were looking at either buying a pre-made coop or making something easy. We have cats and probably racoons in our neighborhood and I worry that any pre-made coop in our price range will not be predator safe.
Anyway, what we do already have in our backyard is this structure (pics below)! It's very sturdy, we will need to add a roof and make some other adjustments. The door with the latch actually opens, so it's easy access once we trim the rose bush back.
I would like some opinions on 1) whether we should cover some of the windows, the windows cover two sides and I worry that they will be too stressed out being that exposed? 2) will the slats on the non-window part let in too much breeze? Should we or can we cover them with plastic or something else? Any suggestions? We live in the San Francisco Bay Area so we don't really have weather. 3) the floor is dirt I believe, can we just cover the dirt up with substrate or should we install a different floor? We plan to build in some shelves for nesting boxes and some perches. 4) This is about 6 square feet by 6 square feet, is it enough space for 3-4 chickens? We plan to maybe knock out one of the windows and create an adjacent run and they can have access to the full yard when we are home to supervise.
Is this a viable project or should we start from scratch?