Suggestions for 100-200 bird coop

[Yallqueda]

Hello all.
We have a 40 acre homestead that we free range our 51 Australorps on, and we’re looking to expand.

I’m primarily interested in a coop that requires no electricity-so I’ve been very keen on the half monitor style coop from the 20’s. We’re planning on 100-200 birds, in addition to our sheep, pigs and rabbits. The closer we can get to food security, the better.

Problem is I can’t find a decent plan for these old style coops, and what I do find is far too small for our application.

So I’m wondering if there isn’t a better design for our needs, or if you all here don’t have a link to a detailed half monitor floor plan.

Thanks very much

 

[nuthatched]

I think barn plans might be more what you're looking for, a minimum of 400sq feet for 100, and a minimum of 800 sq feet for 200.
1sqft of ventilation per bird.
I think you'll find something here, or find an architect to draft you some plans.
https://www.thegarageplanshop.com/barn-plans/garage-plans/126/1.php

I can only imagine the din all those hens screaming their egg song would make.

 

[Percheron chick]

Where are you first.
Are you planning on splitting up the birds? Meat, eggs, breeders, brooding, projects...? My prior coop was a 10x12 horse stall in a large barn. Loved it. Plenty big. Had as many as 25 chickens, 10 guinea and 3 geese in there. The nice part was everything was together under one roof. Made chores so much easier in bad weather. Following the 4 sq ft rule, you can accommodate 100 birds in 4 "stalls" approximately 10x40. Add another 30' for the other animals and a 10' feed room and you end up with a 30x40 8 stall barn with a 10' breezeway down the middle wide enough to drive the tractor down the middle. A 30x40 metal barn can be erected for cheap and you can finish the inside with wire walls for the chickens and panels for the sheep and pigs.
If you are in the south, skip the barn and just go with a 30x40 pavilion or shelter. Divide up the space to accommodate the animals with wire or solid walls, panels and cages leave a wide walkway down the middle.
Starting with a structure that isn't limited to just chickens gives you added value. If your needs change, it's easy and inexpensive to pivot and come time to sell, the next owner can make it their own.

 

[Ted Brown]

Your location is important (I looked at your introduction and see Oklahoma).

I am big fan of fresh air coops, particularly the Woods KD style as detailed Chapter III in Prince Woods book "Modern Fresh Air Poultry Houses" published in the early 1920s. This style of coop is particularly well suited to climates that experience cold winters; it incorporates a half monitor.

The KD coop can be scaled - his 10' by 16' is designed for 40 birds but can be multiplied to accommodate 80, 120, etc to 200 or more birds. See page 92 in Chapter IV and pursue the entire chapter for greater detail.

It would be a stretch to say the book contains detailed plans but there is sufficient information and drawings to complete a build if one is somewhat experienced in building small sheds etc. The Woods coop is somewhat popular on BYC and there a a number of threads by folks who have completed them.

The book also contains discussions of other coop styles that incorporate the fresh air concepts.

 

[CloneFly]

Welcome to the BYC! Wowza! That's a lot of birds! Though, I agree, food security is very important, especially the way things have been going lately

Welcome again!

 

[saysfaa]

Hello all.
We have a 40 acre homestead that we free range our 51 Australorps on, and we’re looking to expand.

I’m primarily interested in a coop that requires no electricity-so I’ve been very keen on the half monitor style coop from the 20’s. We’re planning on 100-200 birds, in addition to our sheep, pigs and rabbits. The closer we can get to food security, the better.

Problem is I can’t find a decent plan for these old style coops, and what I do find is far too small for our application.

So I’m wondering if there isn’t a better design for our needs, or if you all here don’t have a link to a detailed half monitor floor plan.

Thanks very much

The first picture is of housing for 2,000 hens from his book. Since the proportion of depth to width matter, he recommends a solid wall between bays when the size is scaled up to 20 feet or more.

He also showed pictures of rows of stand alone houses that look about 20' wide.

The second picture is a floor plan of a 20' wide house, from a different chapter.

I call them "houses" because the book does. I would call them coops.

 

[saysfaa]

I would take dimensions of the spaces from his book but not building practices. Several things have changed in building materials and practices since the 1920s, lol. Among the more relevant are our 4x8 standard sheet size and their 2x4 were actually 2"x4" - not the 1.5 x 3.5 actual size of our nominal 2x4. And he had a strong bias toward inexpensive so he tended to give the bare minimum sizes of studs, for example, and skipped overhanging eaves and such.

The best conversion to our materials and practices that I've seen is this one by Howard E... https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/woods-colony-house-portable.1104954/

post 3 and post 19 of this thread has the parameters...
Total depth in the Woods' plan that is most often talked about here is the width 1.6 times the depth. Most people adjust the dimensions to use 4x8 sheets more efficiently and get either 1.5 and 2. Both are close enough to work well.

I'm not sure how the height of the wall and slopes of the roofs scale up - at the 8' wide scale he makes the height equal to the width but that is also convenient for people to walk under. The bigger houses don't look like they are 20' tall in the pictures. I don't remember if the book says anything about that - I wasn't looking at those sizes in detail when I studied the book.

Oh. He says the usual dimensions for the Tolman style house (one of several versions of the open fronted designs) are sill measurements of: 8' wide by 14' deep, 10x16, and 14x24. And that the rear wall is 5' high from the sill, the top of the monitor is 8', and the front wall is 3.5' for the smaller houses and that the larger house has proportionately taller studs. page 81 here.

 

[saysfaa]

Width between studs, size of the sills, joists, beams, and rafters - I would follow standard building practices of today - for barns and shed, not houses people live in. There are charts online that give this information. Don't forget to pick one for your area to allow for snow load and/or the wind.

 

[saysfaa]

Your location is important (I looked at your introduction and see Oklahoma).

I am big fan of fresh air coops, particularly the Woods KD style as detailed Chapter III in Prince Woods book "Modern Fresh Air Poultry Houses" published in the early 1920s. This style of coop is particularly well suited to climates that experience cold winters; it incorporates a half monitor.

The KD coop can be scaled - his 10' by 16' is designed for 40 birds but can be multiplied to accommodate 80, 120, etc to 200 or more birds. See page 92 in Chapter IV and pursue the entire chapter for greater detail.

It would be a stretch to say the book contains detailed plans but there is sufficient information and drawings to complete a build if one is somewhat experienced in building small sheds etc. The Woods coop is somewhat popular on BYC and there a a number of threads by folks who have completed them.

The book also contains discussions of other coop styles that incorporate the fresh air concepts.

Oh. This is much better, I should have read though your reply before starting mine. I was looking at a 1912 edition rather than this 1924 edition. Pretty much the same information but much easier to see in the later edition.

 

[3KillerBs]

You might find the coop portions of this book interesting. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/poultry-for-the-farm-and-home.1443907/

I suggest ignoring most of the other century-old management advice because these are not our great-grandmothers' chickens and we get the target 100 eggs per hen per year from low-performance birds like the Brahma I used to have instead of from the Leghorns the book is talking about. But the housing information is sound.