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Have I mentioned I hate doing carpentry anymore? Gonna have a metal roof and concrete floor plus electric chicken doors for free ranging. Plus shutters on the windows for winter. The run will come later.

Have I mentioned I hate doing carpentry anymore? Gonna have a metal roof and concrete floor plus electric chicken doors for free ranging. Plus shutters on the windows for winter. The run will come later.

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[–] 2 pts

Great job! Could consider 1/4 inch hardware cloth over the windows so a raccoon doesn't reach in.

We had an electric door on our coop for a while but discontinued using it because various things kept getting in the way or there would be some power failure or some random thing causing it to not open or close. When you have 50-100 birds, lots of random stuff is always happening. We would always need to walk out to the coop to check that the door in fact opened or closed correctly, and might as well just be opening / closing the door ourselves anyway. Hope you have more success with yours. We have large chickenwire covered zip tie domes as the principle runs for our hens, and they go outside the domes into the forest every day to freerange.

I'm quite interested in what you're doing for the flooring. That's a weak point in many designs including our 8ish year old coop and I'm watching out for good ideas. IMHO, needs to have a good straightforward way to access the entire floor to clean it out once a year, without bumping into the roosting posts or anything else. Plus needs to be reliable over a long term, say 10+ years. Plus needs to prohibit things from tunneling into the coop from the bottom up. Concrete sounds like a good way to go. I have no experience pouring concrete, and am interested in hearing more about your project.

[–] 2 pts

The chicken house we had had unfinished 8" pine tongue and groove floors on joists. I had to clean it out about 4 times a year. The ammonia smell was particularly bad in the spring when the past 3-4 months of excrement warmed up. It was used for chickens for about 10 years. The floor held up great! The shed is 55 years old now.

If there is a cabinet shop or lumber yard near you, you can save money by getting shavings and sawdust for free, you bag it.

[–] 1 pt

Not mine, where I work. They have a generac so not worried about outages, but Im concerned about the doors also. The windows are up high and the horse panels are about 2x4 inches. The nesting boxes arent going to touch the floor, havent really figured them out yet. Gonna just fake it on saturday and figure something out. Concrete for a chicken house isnt really that difficult even with no experience.

[–] 2 pts

Our laying boxes were about 3ft off the floor with a ~6" walkway along the front, sloped roof so birds wouldn't perch/shit all over the top.