I am planning to build a chicken coop (poultry house) for chickens, guinea fowl and turkeys. I am thinking of 20 – 30 birds. They’ll have a huge place to roam, there is a huge piece of grassland…So I need a coop where they can sleep, lay their eggs and shelter for rain. In my area it’s quite hot, never gets below 15C. Max temp 35C. thanks
I operate a free range poultry farm in the USA, and raise bantam chickens, standard chickens, guineas, pigeons and turkeys. I do that via mobile pens on pasture. From your question, I’m guessing that you’re interested in more of the mechanical aspects, but there are some disease and behavioral issues that need to be considered as well. I’ll briefly cover the most salient of these.
Behavioral:
Mixing different bird types can be a problem. Turkeys, guineas and chickens will coexist while they are chicks and feathering out, but I’ve had occasions where the guineas gang up on the chickens, or the turkeys gang up on the chickens, and have had several killed. Once a gang of birds starts in on another bird it’s finished unless you intervene.
Mixing turkeys and other fowl can lead to occurances of blackhead disease. You may be free of this, but it’s fatal in turkeys, and is something that doesn’t occur if you don’t mix chickens and turkeys. they seem to be most susceptible to it when they are chicks, but it can occur at any age.
I’ve found the following to be good guidelines when building coops:
I’m in the usa — all measurements in inches and feet.
Chicken doors 12×12″, with a ramp board, cleats on the ramp board placed 6″ apart for a 45 degree slope. The ramp board 6″ wide by 1/2 or more thick.
Chicken/guinea roosts are 2×2″ boards that I round the corners on with a router. easier for the bird to grip, less chance of bumblefoot (injuries to feet that lead to swelling or eventually, death). Spacing of roosts 9″ vertical, 7″ horizontal. Old ladders make excellent roosts. Attach the ladder to the back wall or ceiling with a hinge, and put a rope in to hold them up, makes cleaning under the roosts much easier. Alternatively, you can use welded wire mesh under the roosts (1/2″ or so) to allow most of the droppings to drop through to the ground below.
Stagger roosts so that birds roosting above defecating don’t cover birds below. In mixed coops I’ve put turkey roosts on one wall and chicken roosts on another, and for the first few weeks entered the coop at night and rearranged the birds to segregate them. After a while they did this themselves.
Roosts for turkeys have to be much sturdier — broad breasted reach weights in excess of 50 lbs, and they have real problems roosting when they are approaching market weights. A 2″x4″ board supported every few feet makes a good roost for 1 bird per 18″ of board length. 10 turkeys can weigh 400lbs (200kg), so design your roosts with your maximum turkey load in mind.
All roosts should be removable without tools to allow you to clean, or to spray them with insecticides or to allow sanitizing between flocks.
Predator issues:
In the coop, rodents will prey on smaller birds, so for the first 3 -4 months of your birds life you’ll want to take pains to keep them out of your runs or any area where there are chicks. Snakes are particularly problematic becuase they can fit through any reasonably sized poultry mesh. Marsupials (raccoons or opossums) are also a constant threat. Your coop design should allow you to close your birds in securely in case of need, and the birds should be protected with something more than chicken wire. I use no climb dog fence (2×2 holes, woven wire), which is proof against dogs, coyotes, raccoons and so on. To exclude rats and snakes you’ll have to go to 1/2″ or less mesh size. Consider your likely predators when constructing your coop. I have lost all of the chickens in a coop to one weasel who came through chicken wire.
Out of the coop:
Hawks are a perennial problem for me; I live near thousands of acres of nature preserves, and so have a constant hawk problem. I string monofilament fishing line 10′ high across the tops of the runs, usually 20 to 30lb test, and this deters the hawks. the alternative is to keep the hens in open-bottom pens that are secure from all predators, and move them with a tractor. I construct my field pens out of square steel tube, and they weigh around 250lbs, 5′x8′x8′. I build the pens 5′ tall for easy maintenance. I do my own welding; these pens cost me $220 (usd) to produce, and my mortality has decreased substantially while allowing the birds the benefit of new pasture every day. It also allows me to control parasites by not visiting any part of the pasture more than once a year, and in areas where I’d like to garden, leaving the birds there for a week or two provides a weed-free tilled area with fresh fertilizer worked into the soil.
Rain protection:
I live in a rainy, colder area. Temperatures rarely dip below 0c, and rarely go above 29c. We average 16cm rain a month during the fall winter and spring. Not a monsoon, but not dry. I’ve tried plastic corrugated panels for roof, corrugated metal roof and tarps. Corrugated plastic panels are my current choice, mostly on the lower price vs metal panels, and more impact resistance. I collect the rain water from the roof into the barrel that serves the chickens water needs. I use a 30 gallon plastic barrel originally used to ship olives. the roof is a several sheets of corrugated pvc plastic, 12′ long x 2′ wide. My pens are 8′ wide, allowing me to use a single 12′ sheet with a 6″ overhang on the top and a 6″ overhang on the bottom, with a plastic gutter and downspout leading to the water barrel, which in feeds the automatic waterer. this means that the chickens get their water barrel filled each time it rains and has cut the labor down substantially. I do have problems when it freezes, and occasionally have to use a heated water dish manufactured for dogs. I use a shed roof, single angle, higher at one end than the other, because it’s simple to produce and all of the water off the roof goes to one side to save on gutter and downspout costs.
tarps as roofs:
If you roof your pen with tarps, make sure that you put some sort of framing underneath to encourage the water to roll off the tarp and not to pool on it. No flat roof designs if you choose a tarp, in other words. you can do flat roofs with the corrugated roofing, but it is sometimes handy to be able to direct your water flow, so you may want to pitch your roof.
chickens don’t care about the rain:
rain isn’t really an issue that the birds care much about, however. Given the choice between running around on the grass in the rain and being under cover, they will choose to get wet. What does matter is that the roosting area be dry, and relatively free of drafts. A wet, inactive bird on a roost with a breeze across it will eat more food and be under more stress than one in a more enclosed area. for this reason I extend the roofing material 3′ down from the top of the pen to provide wind break. In your area I believe you’ll need to provide some cover not for rain, but for sun. Bamboo is hardy, chickens like eating it, and it will tolerate being in a chicken run very well, provided that the stalks are tall enough tht the chickens cannot eat the entire bush. A few clumps of bamboo will provide both cover from predators, windbreak and shade.
Nesting
Hens prefer a darker, more secluded area in which to lay. a 12×12x12 box (two 1×12 boards with 12″ spaces between them forming each nest) is sufficient. For 30 laying hens you’ll need 8-10 nests. They should be mounted 12-18″ above the floor of your coop, and each nest should have a 2″ lip nailed to the front of it, to prevent the eggs from falling out. Hens will sometimes push the eggs of other hens they dislike out of the communal nest (they will all lay in one nest from time to time) and a lip reduces the number of eggs lost due to this behavior.
Wood chips or hay in the nest completes it, and you can “seed” the nest with golf balls to encourage young hens to start laying there. Discourage the birds from sleeping in the nests by removing them and placing them on roosts — means cleaner eggs for you. Typically 3-4 moves on successive nights is all it takes for a new layer flock to get the idea that they aren’t to sleep in the nests.
Buckets as nests:
5 gallon plastic buckets with a hole carved in the lid, and a bolt through the bottom into the wall of the coop make good nests as well. the hole in the lid should be the top half of the lid, providing the egg-retaining lip mentioned above.
Turkeys prefer 30 gallon plastic garbage cans half filled with hay.
Sizing of coop:
If I were designing a coop for 30 turkeys, and they had no outside access, I’d design one that was aproximately 300 square feet, with 20 gallons or more of water capacity, and a feed capacity of 30lbs or more. I would include 15′ of roosts, and the roosts would be probably 3 rows, with a ladder from the ground to the roosts for broad breasted turkeys. For heritage turkey breeds no ladder is necc. Your minimum coop height with turkeys is 3′6″. I’d suggest a mimum height of 5′ for your coop for your ease of maintenance.
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