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Marlinmabel
In the Brooder
- Mar 31, 2025
- 11
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Hello Catherine, and welcome to BYC!Glad you joined.
This is a huge misconception with first-time chicken keepers. Chickens do not need to be kept warm in the winter especially in your relatively mild climate. What they need is DRY. They need draft free roost space. That means no breezes blowing across them that is strong enough to open their feathers. You need copious amounts of ventilation. You need to think in terms of square feet not square inches.
This is extremely flimsy. It's almost like screening. It's very easy to tear open.
This is much stronger. And a better choice for securing your coop openings. I would not encourage you to put it across the bottom of their run. Instead make a predator apron about 2 ft out all around the outside of the run walls.
Chickens can easily jump up to the top of a chain link fence and over to the other side.
This is not free-ranging. Free-ranging is completely unobstructed ability to go wherever they want. What you are offering them is a larger pen. If they are left out there dawn to dusk, they will quickly strip the entire area of any greenery.
Thanks for all your experienced advice!Hello Catherine, and welcome to BYC!
This is a huge misconception with first-time chicken keepers. Chickens do not need to be kept warm in the winter especially in your relatively mild climate. What they need is DRY. They need draft free roost space. That means no breezes blowing across them that is strong enough to open their feathers. You need copious amounts of ventilation. You need to think in terms of square feet not square inches.
This is extremely flimsy. It's almost like screening. It's very easy to tear open.
This is much stronger. And a better choice for securing your coop openings. I would not encourage you to put it across the bottom of their run. Instead make a predator apron about 2 ft out all around the outside of the run walls.
Chickens can easily jump up to the top of a chain link fence and over to the other side.
This is not free-ranging. Free-ranging is completely unobstructed ability to go wherever they want. What you are offering them is a larger pen. If they are left out there dawn to dusk, they will quickly strip the entire area of any greenery.
I suppose you are right about no free ranging in my tiny backyard! I am reluctant to let them out in the open because we seem to have lots of hawks around here. Rabbits are all over my neighborhood.
I got the idea from someone on YouTube to create a garden for your chickens by planting things inside a floppy netted fence so they can poke their heads through and nibble on the tops of the greens without being able to scratch them up and destroy the roots. So I will try to do this on the side of my house where they will have some wider space but the problem is that its a bit shady there. I do understand that the rest of their areas will not be green.
A friend also showed me some garden bed cloth that discourages chickens from digging up plants. She has a lovely garden with lots of acres and lets her chickens truly free range but I couldn't do that in my yard with all the scouting hawks in the trees.
I just put up a 20'x10' greenhouse that comes up to their fenced run under the spirea bushes. I will occasionally allow them into there as well where I will plant more things for them to nibble on when I'm inside. I put this space up now because their coop and run areas aren't ready and I'd like to start taking them outside under that cover during the warmer weather. My plan is to give them this space during the winter too when I'm not using it as much so they can be out of the colder weather or rain.
Thanks for the advice on size of hardware cloth. What I got was galvanized hot dipped 1/2 " hardware cloth. I am hoping to keep out any digging animals like rodents or snakes from tunneling into the run. I'm wondering why you would discourage me from putting the hardware cloth on the floor of the chicken cage/coop? I have put up a wooden picket fence separating the caged run and there is a 10 ft wide space between that and the backyard fence so the 20'x10' chicken cage will exactly fit inside the width of this space, so it would be difficult to create a predator apron inside the two fences but I guess I can do it on the outside of both fences if that would work.
I have a pool in the backyard and don't want to let the chickens all over the yard in case they fall in or kids step in feces while playing around the pool.
I plan to put up bird netting across the top of the fences that separate their run along the spirea bushes/property line so they can be under the spirea bushes without hawks attacking them and keeping them from flying over the chain link fence. There may be gaps around the bases of the spirea bushes that could be weak entry points but I have just trimmed all those bushes to do this so that the bushes will fill out to deter hawks from flying in and chickens flying out.
Do you think it's safe for the chickens to be let out and in via an automatic door at sunrise/sunset without my supervision if their runs are covered by bird netting? Do you think I should allow them 24/7 access to their caged run that is surrounded by hardware cloth? Do you think their coop would be safe and sturdy enough? The playhouses seem awfully flimsy compared to the build of their coop but I'm hoping the added plywood walls would make it more habitable during extreme weather. I really don't yet well understand their intricate needs for proper ventilation and humidity levels so I'm hoping this structure would be sufficient for their needs. At least they would have the choice of different types of rooms for their comfort level during seasonal changes and windy days. The playhouses seem to offer an extreme amount of ventilation while the main coop has only one vent at the top and no windows but I will add a window for more light to come through and I will put roosts in each room. I am guessing that I will need to monitor and modify as they adapt to the coops. Being that the playhouses weren't built to be coops I am worried they won't be sturdy enough to keep them comfortable. I will make sure to keep the windows closed during rainy weather so they don't get wet.
As far as sq footage is concerned they will have 40 sq ft in floor space between the three separate rooms. The playhouses are about 4 ft tall while the main middle coop is 5 ft tall. I'm hoping to do deep bedding in all three. I plan to put dust baths in the playhouses and food, roosts and nest boxes in the main middle coop where i'm hoping they will all fit to sleep in since it's sturdier and less windy. Does this seem like a good plan? Perhaps I should put food/water in all the rooms. Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! I was reluctant to post anything here being so new and inexperienced but I think I really needed this help.
I really appreciate your feedback!
Best regards,
Catherine
