Glamor Shots and Conclusion
Here's my whole setup in all its glory! I'm very happy with how it turned out. I wanted to make it nice to look at, since it's in my suburban backyard and I'd have to look at it every day. The run has a woodsy feel to it which I love. The coop matches our house. Both coop and run have been built with practicality in mind, and I'm enjoying the useful little details. The chickens have been happy there so far, and my family has been happy to spend time with them in their home!
One thing I would've done differently, and which I'm planning on building soon, is EVEN more ventilation in the coop. It has a lot already, but summer here gets HOT and humid, and the chickens are panting at night even with both of the big windows open, and all the big vents. So I'm planning on building a HC screen door in addition to the human door, so that in the summer I can prop the human door open and only have the screen door in that space (maybe have it be wooden/opaque on the bottom so the chickens don't get spooked looking at the raccoons circling them). I might have done the window in the door differently, if I'd known - made that HC with plexiglass on top, so it can be opened in the summer and closed in the winter... Word of advice to anybody who has summers - plan for lots of things to open!
And now, here are the glamor shots!
And one before the run went up and the vegetation leafed out to hide half the coop... Here's the whole coop!
One thing I would've done differently, and which I'm planning on building soon, is EVEN more ventilation in the coop. It has a lot already, but summer here gets HOT and humid, and the chickens are panting at night even with both of the big windows open, and all the big vents. So I'm planning on building a HC screen door in addition to the human door, so that in the summer I can prop the human door open and only have the screen door in that space (maybe have it be wooden/opaque on the bottom so the chickens don't get spooked looking at the raccoons circling them). I might have done the window in the door differently, if I'd known - made that HC with plexiglass on top, so it can be opened in the summer and closed in the winter... Word of advice to anybody who has summers - plan for lots of things to open!
And now, here are the glamor shots!
And one before the run went up and the vegetation leafed out to hide half the coop... Here's the whole coop!