@Blooie how did you secure the cattle panels to the steel posts? I really like your hoop coop!
Hoop Coop Pros and Cons
- Thread starter katdur
- Start date
Could you tell me the dimensions of your hoop coop?Well, I used it as a run, but the simple addition of an enclosure in one end would be wonderful.
Let me address your SO's cons:
Easily invaded by predators. Nope. At least not here, and I'm in northern Wyoming not too far from Yellowstone Park. We used cattle panels secured to steel fence posts, ran chicken wire over that to deter overhead predators, then ran a hardware cloth skirt up about 2 feet and folded it out at the bottom and out about another 2 feet to deter diggers. Works perfectly! Our dog tried to dig under it, broke and bloodied a toenail, blamed the chickens for her misfortune and never bothered them again - even when they were out free ranging she'd share their water pan. We stuck landscape fabric staples every few feet, the grass grows right up through it, and Ken can mow right up to the edge of the run, which takes away hiding places for smaller predators.
The run. The lattice was just added for looks because our setup is on a corner and we didn't want it to be an eyesore when people drove by.
Difficult to keep warm in winter: Again, nope. Here our spring chick season still has temps in the teens and twenties with winds of 60 mph, and I brood chicks out there in the run with just a heating pad cave. We cover it with greenhouse type plastic and our birds are out in it all winter long. The coop is not insulated or heated, and they thrive. Our winter temps are in the sub zero range - as in over a week of 23 below zero until it warmed up to 10 below zero. In summer we just roll up the plastic and replace it with landscape fabric for shade. Easy peasy!
Snow, wind, rain......it doesn't matter. The run stays warm and dry.
Chicks being raised out in the cattle panel run when our temps were in the teens. You can see how bright the run stays, and everyone does just great.
Expensive to build: Nope. Cattle panels are cheap. We picked up 3 of them in the beginning. A couple of years later we decided to expand the run so we bought one more cattle panel and 2 more fence posts. We removed the south end (it came off in one piece with the apron and skirt still attached), put in the posts, wired the new panel in and we were done. We didn't use any wood framing at all....just inexpensive cattle panels, steel fence posts, a roll of wire, zIp ties, and the chicken wire and hardware cloth. This winter we had a wind gust (logged in officially by the National Weather Service) at 90 mph, and that hoop never budged. The best part is the ease of building. Ken and I are both in our 60s, and both of us have some disabilities. It took us no time at all, and we did it all ourselves.
Expanding the run. In the first photo you can see how the end piece came off in one piece, with the skirt and apron still attached. We just added the new panel and wired the end back on.
I hope this info and the photos help. A more complete description of how the run was built is on My Coop. Just click on the link under my avatar and the run build starts about halfway down. This run would make it so easy to simply put a enclosed structure on one end for a coop/run combination. Good luck!
gandydancer1
In the Brooder
Click on bloodies post under her name where it says my coop. That's the way I found her coop and run info. I started mine yesterday although it sure isn't as nice and neat as hers. If It ever stops raining I'll finish.
gandydancer1
In the Brooder
Sorry Blooie hit wrong button!!!! Ugh
Um, nope.
I'm afraid we weren't that scientific about it. But I would guess it's about 8 feet wide at the ground, and figure 4 panels at 4 feet long, that's what, 8x16?Pictures when done, please!!
NewLibertyHmstd
Tater Salad
My first coop was a hoop coop and it wasn't the most ideal design for strong winds and extreme cold. We had the standard 2x6 bottom frame with cattle panels and some bracing with a peak board support. Through a couple bad summer thunderstorms it would even with the support boards turn into a giant wave machine and the panels and tarp would flex so much that the girls would end up camped out on the floor of the run. I think the design has had some serious improvements done and I'm planning on building a Farm Market Solutions style hoop coop for my broilers this fall.
I really like both AART's and Blooie's pens/hoop coops and there are others detailed in the coops sections here on BYC. I also really like this one - and they give you plans and materials list! Chook-A-Holics Coop. Here's another cool one, too - Egg shaped Hoop coop. If you google hoop coops (or go to pinterest, too), you'll find MANY designs for the hoop coops - some permanent solutions and some portable. I think I collected more than 200 pictures of different hoop coops while I was deciding how to build and trying to figure out sizing etc.
They can be as expensive or as in-expensive as you like. You can use a simple tarp roof or you use tin, galvanized steel sheets, green house plastic, green house panels (come in clear, grey & standard green) or fiberboard. They can all be installed in a couple of different ways. Just like in a "normal" coop, you can use all kinds of ideas for next boxes & roosts, put it on plain ground, put it on cement/block/brick or even a wood flooor.
Our hoop coops aren't nearly as nice as Blooie's or AARTs, but they withstood the inundation of rain (11" in just a few hours) and wind from Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. I had to replace one tarp - it came loose on one corner and shredded/flapped in the wind. That tarp stayed attached OVER THE ROOSTs at that time. And unlike when our chickens at our other place free ranged and then just put themselves to bed in our tin barn - when we first got started with chickens (up on the 8' stall walls and 14' - 16' up in the air on the rafters) and we must not have had good enough ventilation and had a lot of comb frostbite on the hens as well as the roosters, the coops w/ tarp roofs and not fully covered/locked down - we've had NO frostbite. Even though we aren't in the mountains of NC, we do get sustained (several days at a time) below freezing temps, snow and ICE. I did put up a single heat lamp for brooding some new chicks last year, but don't use it for the mature chickens. The heat lamp, when used, gets tied and clamped so that it does not come loose nor does it come into contact with anything flammable (other than dust - which was a concern to me - but seems to work OK and on warmer days, I'd turn it off long enough to cool and then wipe any dust off - several times a week).
I really like our open air hoop coops. They are relatively easy for me (no building experience, in my mid-50's now) to build almost by myself. They can be taken apart or transported. Mine do not have the wheels and here on this property where the pasture is very poor sand and clumps of grass it did not hold up well just dragging it around. They've become pretty much permanent - though they can be moved if necessary.
Before it was moved to a different location. And then the two together after moving closer to water access and the barn.
Then the one by the barn -
The panels we used (combo style) are 50" tall, so joined bottom to bottom, our depth (from front of hoop coop to rear of hoop coop) is 100" or 8'4" and the side to side measurement is 8'. You can certainly make them longer/deeper by adding more panels. Waiting to hear back from a couple of people to see if they were able to use the panels to make theirs wider. OR you could use pallets as a pony wall base and attach the panels as hoops to make it wider and a little taller as well.
Here was a temporary shed I built on rented property while we spent 5 weeks in a hotel and then kept the ponies at this property after we went to closing while we got the fencing up... This was in use from beginning of Nov 2014 thru the middle of January 2015 - when it was taken apart, moved out to our new property and rebuilt a little differently. it is the same depth, but it's wider (close to 12' wide) and a little taller, too. This was all strapped together with haystring and worked GREAT for us - even during heavy rains & snow/ice in December 2014.
Our boys' feed shed (in front of the boys' paddocks). It is 12' by 8'. Soon to become 16' wide, but not sure going to make it deeper yet. Still using haystring to secure it at this time. Eventually it will be bolted together. Never meant to go this long before making it more permanent, LOL.
And the girls' feed shed. It, too, is currently 8 deep and 12' wide. It is getting updated eventually to 12' deep by 16' wide. It also is still tied with haystring - one of many projects we haven't gotten back to yet.
These are not fancy by any means, but they were in-expensive the way they are currently built, have held up and I like them. Would they work this way in a nicer neighborhood? Probably not - but then you can follow the nicer ones that are linked above,
If I had to do anything different - the main thing here would be to use 1/4" - 1/2" hardware cloth on, at least, the lower section of the coops, instead of having to go back and redo the chicken wire when we had multiple predators here (but we didn't know - the previous property, where these were originally built, we didn't have predators that tore thru the chicken wire). To be honest, I've since found out that full size hens can also tear out chicken wire if they really want to!
They can be as expensive or as in-expensive as you like. You can use a simple tarp roof or you use tin, galvanized steel sheets, green house plastic, green house panels (come in clear, grey & standard green) or fiberboard. They can all be installed in a couple of different ways. Just like in a "normal" coop, you can use all kinds of ideas for next boxes & roosts, put it on plain ground, put it on cement/block/brick or even a wood flooor.
Our hoop coops aren't nearly as nice as Blooie's or AARTs, but they withstood the inundation of rain (11" in just a few hours) and wind from Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. I had to replace one tarp - it came loose on one corner and shredded/flapped in the wind. That tarp stayed attached OVER THE ROOSTs at that time. And unlike when our chickens at our other place free ranged and then just put themselves to bed in our tin barn - when we first got started with chickens (up on the 8' stall walls and 14' - 16' up in the air on the rafters) and we must not have had good enough ventilation and had a lot of comb frostbite on the hens as well as the roosters, the coops w/ tarp roofs and not fully covered/locked down - we've had NO frostbite. Even though we aren't in the mountains of NC, we do get sustained (several days at a time) below freezing temps, snow and ICE. I did put up a single heat lamp for brooding some new chicks last year, but don't use it for the mature chickens. The heat lamp, when used, gets tied and clamped so that it does not come loose nor does it come into contact with anything flammable (other than dust - which was a concern to me - but seems to work OK and on warmer days, I'd turn it off long enough to cool and then wipe any dust off - several times a week).
I really like our open air hoop coops. They are relatively easy for me (no building experience, in my mid-50's now) to build almost by myself. They can be taken apart or transported. Mine do not have the wheels and here on this property where the pasture is very poor sand and clumps of grass it did not hold up well just dragging it around. They've become pretty much permanent - though they can be moved if necessary.
Before it was moved to a different location. And then the two together after moving closer to water access and the barn.
Then the one by the barn -
The panels we used (combo style) are 50" tall, so joined bottom to bottom, our depth (from front of hoop coop to rear of hoop coop) is 100" or 8'4" and the side to side measurement is 8'. You can certainly make them longer/deeper by adding more panels. Waiting to hear back from a couple of people to see if they were able to use the panels to make theirs wider. OR you could use pallets as a pony wall base and attach the panels as hoops to make it wider and a little taller as well.
Here was a temporary shed I built on rented property while we spent 5 weeks in a hotel and then kept the ponies at this property after we went to closing while we got the fencing up... This was in use from beginning of Nov 2014 thru the middle of January 2015 - when it was taken apart, moved out to our new property and rebuilt a little differently. it is the same depth, but it's wider (close to 12' wide) and a little taller, too. This was all strapped together with haystring and worked GREAT for us - even during heavy rains & snow/ice in December 2014.
Our boys' feed shed (in front of the boys' paddocks). It is 12' by 8'. Soon to become 16' wide, but not sure going to make it deeper yet. Still using haystring to secure it at this time. Eventually it will be bolted together. Never meant to go this long before making it more permanent, LOL.
And the girls' feed shed. It, too, is currently 8 deep and 12' wide. It is getting updated eventually to 12' deep by 16' wide. It also is still tied with haystring - one of many projects we haven't gotten back to yet.
These are not fancy by any means, but they were in-expensive the way they are currently built, have held up and I like them. Would they work this way in a nicer neighborhood? Probably not - but then you can follow the nicer ones that are linked above,
If I had to do anything different - the main thing here would be to use 1/4" - 1/2" hardware cloth on, at least, the lower section of the coops, instead of having to go back and redo the chicken wire when we had multiple predators here (but we didn't know - the previous property, where these were originally built, we didn't have predators that tore thru the chicken wire). To be honest, I've since found out that full size hens can also tear out chicken wire if they really want to!
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and to show you how in-expensively I protected some Bantams? I used cardboard boxes that I can get for no charge at work. I put these up in September 2016 a few days after I got these new girls/guy.
I started out by actually "sewing" the cardboard to the panels. Then I realized that I could just tie up strands and open the box up and drop it over the strand and then tie another strand at the bottom to pull it up against the coop...
LASTED thru Hurricane Matthew (no pics of this coop then, sorry), the winter when we got a couple of bouts of snow & ice and is now "shredding" or decomposing. With hurricane season starting again now, I need to redo the card board boxes. Guess it's a good thing I brought a whole lot of them, in different sizes, home last week from work. & where did the "old" cardboard boxes go? Well, right into that DLM there, LOL.
and the coop up by the barn? I used feed sacks on the outside of the coop. Turned out not to be a good idea - several of the ponies thought that was a neat game to tear them apart! If I used them again (might), they will go up on the inside of the coop...
So, not the most pretty, but it sure does work and it's always nice when you can get some things for free or re-use what you have. Some of our original combo panels were purchased in 1995 in MT and made the trip to NC with us in 1997 and have been on 3 different properties. Yes, we have many more new panels, but...
Hay string (I do a LOT with hay string!), cardboard boxes, feed bags, cattle panels, chicken wire, hardware cloth - it's all good!
I started out by actually "sewing" the cardboard to the panels. Then I realized that I could just tie up strands and open the box up and drop it over the strand and then tie another strand at the bottom to pull it up against the coop...
LASTED thru Hurricane Matthew (no pics of this coop then, sorry), the winter when we got a couple of bouts of snow & ice and is now "shredding" or decomposing. With hurricane season starting again now, I need to redo the card board boxes. Guess it's a good thing I brought a whole lot of them, in different sizes, home last week from work. & where did the "old" cardboard boxes go? Well, right into that DLM there, LOL.
and the coop up by the barn? I used feed sacks on the outside of the coop. Turned out not to be a good idea - several of the ponies thought that was a neat game to tear them apart! If I used them again (might), they will go up on the inside of the coop...
So, not the most pretty, but it sure does work and it's always nice when you can get some things for free or re-use what you have. Some of our original combo panels were purchased in 1995 in MT and made the trip to NC with us in 1997 and have been on 3 different properties. Yes, we have many more new panels, but...
Hay string (I do a LOT with hay string!), cardboard boxes, feed bags, cattle panels, chicken wire, hardware cloth - it's all good!
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SHERRING7712
Chirping
We built a hoop coop last summer so here's some things we figured out.
Pros-snow slid right off
Cons-snow built up on sides and "should" have been shoveled away
Pros-cheap to build
Pros-Actually provides more area than we thought.
Cons-Can be hot in summer-needs tweaking with tarp or fan installed
Cons-We used PVC and the weight on the side of the coop combined with "Heavy" 60mph winds caused 3 pvc pipes to break and need replaced, which was a pain.
I do love the design and if I do a 2nd one I plan on using an old trampoline frame to create the arched top and t-posts for the sides for added structural integrity. Here are a couple of pics for reference. Also not shown in the pics the front of the coop that is "open" is now covered in a shade tarp. The entire coop is covered in wire poultry netting that extends 8 inches out on the ground and anchored with 4" garden staples to prevent digging under. Also not shown in back ventilation holes were cut and covered with hardware cloth. Laying boxes and roosts were added to the "hen House" at the back and a roost in the run part that stretches the legnth of coop. Finished dimentions are 32' long by @12.5' wide and @7.5' high in center. Good luck to you
Pros-snow slid right off
Cons-snow built up on sides and "should" have been shoveled away
Pros-cheap to build
Pros-Actually provides more area than we thought.
Cons-Can be hot in summer-needs tweaking with tarp or fan installed
Cons-We used PVC and the weight on the side of the coop combined with "Heavy" 60mph winds caused 3 pvc pipes to break and need replaced, which was a pain.
I do love the design and if I do a 2nd one I plan on using an old trampoline frame to create the arched top and t-posts for the sides for added structural integrity. Here are a couple of pics for reference. Also not shown in the pics the front of the coop that is "open" is now covered in a shade tarp. The entire coop is covered in wire poultry netting that extends 8 inches out on the ground and anchored with 4" garden staples to prevent digging under. Also not shown in back ventilation holes were cut and covered with hardware cloth. Laying boxes and roosts were added to the "hen House" at the back and a roost in the run part that stretches the legnth of coop. Finished dimentions are 32' long by @12.5' wide and @7.5' high in center. Good luck to you
I make my hoop coops portable and only use them for 3 seasons, then the birds go into winter housing. Here is a page with pics: How to make a hoop tractor
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