Audra Trosper: Clean [the coop] first, or at least pretend like you’re cleaning it first. Literally get a shovel, get whatever you think you’re gonna clean with and get in there and see how well can you reach all the corners.
If it’s a prefab, if it’s one of the smaller ones, how well can you reach all the corners, if the nest boxes are like sticking out the side, how insulated are they? Because if it gets really cold in the winter, if those nest boxes are gonna get really cold in the winter ’cause they’re just hanging out there in the air, how well can you fit through the door? People don’t think much about that, but what if you need to get in there and grab a hen because she’s acting off and she’s tucked in the far corner? Can you get to her? That kind of thing.
[00:01:00]
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast at Mother Earth News. For 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources, while helping you conserve your financial resources. In this podcast, we host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are, in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Jessica Mitchell: We’d like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Brinsea. That’s B R I N S E A, chick incubation specialists. They’ve been focusing on egg incubator design continuously since 1976, resulting in egg incubators, chick brooders, and incubation accessories. They offer unparalleled practicality, reliability, superior hatch rates, and healthy chicks. Innovation you can trust.
Josh Wilder: Hello and welcome to this episode of Mother Earth News and friends. My name is Josh Wilder, and here with me today I have a few chicken keepers that are gonna tell you a little bit about coop planning and maintenance. If you could all go around the horn and introduce yourselves, starting with you, Alyssa.
Alyssa Warner: Hi, my name is Alyssa Warner. I am our video producer here at Mother Earth News. I’ve been keeping chickens for. Going on five years now, and I’ve got a backyard flock of six to [00:02:00] eleven, and I’ve only ever had one coop.
Josh Wilder: Tonya?
Tonya Olson: I’m Tonya Olson. I am the digital content manager here at Mother Earth News.
And I’ve had chickens for, this would be the fifth year. I flexed up to 40 chickens at one time, and, but right now I’m back down to 20. I’ve also incubated chicks and sold those.
Josh Wilder: And how many coops have you had?
Tonya Olson: Oh I’m up to two right now.
Josh Wilder: Audra?
Audra Trosper: I’m Audra Trosper.
I am the editor in chief of Backyard Poultry Magazine. I’ve had chickens for over 20 years. I’ve also kept ducks and geese. I currently have a flock of 33. I’ve been up to as many as 60 before. I’m on my second coop. I don’t have two coops running at the same time. I’m on my second coop though.
Switched gears at one point and created a whole new pen and everything else for them. And we’ve hatched babies, not incubated, but we’ve hatched them under hens and stuff in the past,
Josh Wilder: When you put [00:03:00] together a coop especially with maintenance in mind, what features do you think about when you want to save work?
Around this time of year, especially when you’re looking to clean it.
Audra Trosper: A wide doorway. People do not think about the wide doorway. They get the coop, the cute little coop at the store, and it’s got them the doorway. How are you gonna shovel that out? So a wide doorway is something you can easily shovel out, is important
Josh Wilder: Alyssa or Tonya have you had any issues maintaining your coop?
Alyssa Warner: I have a prefab coop. I bought my coop out of pre-cut pieces of wood. I didn’t own a single tool when I bought my chicken coop. And that was perfect. But replacing pieces gets really difficult when they’re really specific.
So while mine was really accessible, it’s really tough to repair. That said, I love my coop and I will probably end up just reinforcing it in different ways
Tonya Olson: When cleaning out the coop. I find that it’s [00:04:00] easy or to shovel out when you have one piece flooring. We used a high quality vinyl just because that’s what was already cut and on clearance.
Keeping it one solid piece instead of chopping it up just because it makes the push out of it a lot smoother and easier. You don’t get caught up on a crevice . And then a little pest can crawl into crevices too. So I find that it’s easy having one long piece of vinyl or cheap flooring to go in the bottom of there.
Josh Wilder: Obviously you wanna think about the easiest ways to clean. When dealing with the coop and the different features you can have, elevated coop, walk-in designs or external nesting boxes for the bird’s comfort and for your, ergonomic considerations, what do you prefer to have in your coop?
Audra Trosper: We’ve tried a lot of different nest boxes. We started out with [00:05:00] wooden ones that my husband had made and then we moved from that to one of those big metal ten hole box things, which was fine.
We had 60 chickens at the time. And I think they still only used four boxes out of the ten hole nest box. So it was a waste and it was incredibly difficult to clean out the nest boxes. I hated that. And then we got the idea that we would try the rollaway nest boxes because that would be, they’d lay the eggs, they’d roll into a little front compartment.
We could get ’em out easy. ’cause I don’t have the nest boxes outside. They’re actually in the house. They’re not like sticking outta the house or anything. So we thought that would be easy. Keeping from breaking. No, the chickens really didn’t like it. And the eggs didn’t always roll down like they were supposed to anyway.
And then we’d have chickens who decided that she’d wanted to be broody, and she would reach into that little slot where the eggs were supposed to roll away and she would pull them back up with her beak and tuck them under her.
And she would keep trying to do this and they would keep trying to roll away and then the eggs would end up breaking ’cause they would roll into each other ’cause she’s constantly trying to pull up underneath her. It was ridiculous. And so now we actually, I got [00:06:00] these tote things with holes in them and stuff from Walmart.
They were cheap. They were like $8 a piece. They’re big, which is nice because I have some chocolate orpingtons and stuff in here that are pretty big girls and. And they’re so nice because they’ve got holes around the side already in them, and I can put the hay in. They get in there. If they break an egg, it’s easy to pull the hay out.
They’re so easy to just, they’re lightweight. You pull ’em out, you wash ’em, you throw ’em back in. It is probably the most simple mess box. I love them. The chickens love them. And that, that’s what we, when you go into nest box, really think about how easy is it going to be to clean those out, because eggs are gonna get broken.
It’s gonna happen or they’re gonna poop in the nest, or something along that line. So how easy is this nest box, not just to get the goop out, but like to clean? Clean? You don’t wanna leave like disgusting egg goop drying in your egg boxes. That’s gross. Yeah,
Alyssa Warner: I think you brought up a really good point.
Like your nesting boxes also have a lot to do with what’s comfortable for your chickens. So it’s like asking [00:07:00] someone what their favorite cookie is, like everyone’s gonna have a different and equally valid answer.
Audra Trosper: Yeah,
Alyssa Warner: I think I have two different kinds of nest boxes because I have.
Two different kinds of chickens who want different things.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. I actually still have one large wooden nest box and I have two hints who like to lay in it and it’s mounted to the wall and I have one hand who likes to get in underneath that and lay. Nobody else lays there, just her. She lays on the floor underneath because of course she does.
Alyssa Warner: Whatever she wants, as long as she’s laying there, whatever she wants.
Audra Trosper: The biggest thing is how easy is it to clean? Is there good airflow chicken sneak at airflow? Especially when it gets hot weather and they’re sitting in the nest box trying to lay an egg and it’s a hundred degrees out, so good airflow and enough space for her to be comfortable. You can’t have these little, if you have big hinge, you can’t have like little bitty nest boxes.
I conversely, probably if you have like a bunch of nies, you probably don’t wanna have a giant nest box. You might not feel secure in that.
Alyssa Warner: My neighbor did give me, I think it was just like [00:08:00] as a little hide for when we had different aged chickens and we were integrating. It’s like this plastic rock that he bought from like a Home Depot and he cut.
A little hole out on each side, and we put it in there so that the little chicks could have somewhere to hide, but the big hands would squeeze themselves in, especially in the summer. Like you said, when it’s hot because there’s airflow one way and the other. And that’s the favorite nest box.
Audra Trosper: Yep.
Alyssa Warner: Just on the floor.
Just a rock with a
Audra Trosper: A rock, of course. Yeah. You can go fancy and make these really fancy ones and some people do. We, back in the beginning we tried the whole cute little curtains on it. My chickens did not care about curtains and were actually very relieved when we finally took them out.
They kept avoiding the nest boxes that had the two nest boxes that had the curtains on them. So I know people say they want privacy. I don’t know. Mine like to pile two to three hands in the nest box and argue about who gets to lay in there. Then that instance. So I don’t know who’s, whose hands want privacy.
Mine don’t really care.
Josh Wilder: So [00:09:00] speaking to, they
Alyssa Warner: don’t want privacy, they want priority.
Audra Trosper: Exactly. Yes.
Josh Wilder: Speaking to what Alyssa is saying about the her prefab coop and difficulty repairing it, Audra, how did you build your coop and did you keep repairs in mind while you were building it?
Audra Trosper: Okay, so our first coop was an old shed that was already here.
We moved here. It got patched with plywood and it got reup supported numerous times. Because it was old and rickety and whatnot. We did put some installation up on the north side at one point because some, I think at one point there might have been a few more holes in there were boards. So I it went through a lot of things.
And then when we did the second coop, we actually went and bought, the big building here thing you, behind me. And had that brought in and had the ground prepared and had that brought in. So we wanted to have, make sure there was plenty of room and, unfortunately we weren’t able to build it at the time, so we just, we had one brought in and [00:10:00] then I went in and I wish I had done the linoleum thing in the floor like Tonya did.
Tonya Olson: Yeah,
Audra Trosper: and the vinyl at the time we ended up using the deck paint, the waterproof deck paint, stuff that you can put down. And that’s done a good job. It’s kept the floor from being, problematic or anything like that. We’re able to scoop it out. It doesn’t soak up anything. And I actually painted the entire inside.
With a non-toxic white barn paint so that we could seal it to help keep mites and whatever down, that kind of thing. I have removable rebars in there, so I can just go in and take them down, check ’em out the front door, and then move around in there without hut to been down and get underneath anything.
I do have plans to rearrange things in there though this summer if all goes well.
Josh Wilder: You mentioned earlier the ventilation systems and the necessity. Can you talk about what your ventilation system is there? And Tonya, you as well.
Audra Trosper: I have Vince on up, up high. So I’ve got one on the east side, the [00:11:00] west side, and I’ve got two on the north side. Then I have the little door on the south side and we get a lot of really heavy south wind, so I didn’t wanna have too much on the south side. And then on the east side, they also have their big door.
So it came of course with the big heavy door that you can latch shut, solid door that stays open 90% of the time. And inside that my husband built me a screen door, and with that we put the heavy duty hardware mesh on. And that’s what actually is blocking them from going out most of the time.
So they have that huge door on that side. We don’t shut the big door unless it’s going to be in the thirties. If it’s gonna get down into the thirties, then we shut the big door or if it’s gonna be like a really heavy storm coming in. Otherwise the big door stays open. Morning sunshine shines right in.
They love it. And then in the summer when the oak tree leaves out, it helps shade the door a little bit.
Tonya Olson: Nice. As far as ventilation we didn’t design one of ’em. One of ’em was given to us and then we sourced the other one that we had more [00:12:00] design ideas for we put a window in one.
We open and close. Plexiglass like window for the summer versus the wintertime. And then it has a also a pitched roof on it. And in that pitched like roof, there’s like a triangle shape basically that we take up and put down a boarding on it so that it gets more ventilation in the summer versus the wintertime.
Nothing too fancy.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. We actually cover, we have this blue board insulation stuff that we put over the north vents when it’s gonna get really cold in the winter. So the key is to keep it above your birds up high.
Alyssa Warner: That’s probably the worst thing about my prefab coop is that the vent is like a little window and I’m like, my chickens don’t need a window.
They need air.
Audra Trosper: Yeah.
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Josh Wilder: And Tonya, you’ve had an automatic door in the past. What are the benefits of that?
Tonya Olson: The benefits of having an automatic open door is that if you’re not around it’ll close at night by itself. It protects against predators, basically.
You can program it to open anytime of the day that you really want it to. I would also say that, in the summertime it is a good habit to make sure that it opens up in the daytime just to make sure that they’re be able [00:14:00] to get out of the coop and be able to run around. I’ve put those automatic doors on one on the coop and then one on the run so that there’s different times of day that I’ll let ’em come out into the coop and then another time of the day they’ll actually let them free range in the yard.
So those are different times that I will consider letting them out. ’cause there’s more predators earlier in the morning, but they’d still be safer in the run.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. Or get out. In the evening, usually about two, three hours before bedtime, we open the big door and let them out into the rest of the area and they get to go run in the big yard.
Sorry for my sudden disappearance. I had to go dig this out of a goat mouse
Josh Wilder: nice.
Audra Trosper: The wind blew all kinds of fun things around and I’ve walked the pen a couple times, but they keep finding things that I missed,
Josh Wilder: sure. So we talked a little bit about chores before, but if what’s a good way to lay out a coop?
So chores might take, five minutes or less. And if you have that now or if there are things you might want to [00:15:00] change, if you could build your, perfect coop in the sky.
Audra Trosper: I want poop boards. I know that sounds funny, but I do that’s one of the things I wanted when I redo it, is to have poop boards down and then you can lay like a tarp along it and just pull that tarp right out, dump everything, because that’s where most of the poop is. They don’t do a ton of it. When they’re walking around and they’re laying, it’s at night.
When they’re sleeping, they poop everywhere.
Alyssa Warner: The best thing about buying a coop is most of the little ones have the little board you can pull out. So easy. Yep. It’s so easy. And then you just carry it on the board to your compost pile and dump it out.
Audra Trosper: Yep.
Tonya Olson: I’d have to agree with Audra. I also like the idea of having a tarp underneath where they roost at night.
Audra Trosper: Yes. Yeah. I have a whole plan. Like I said, if things go to the way I want, I’ll have a brooder. In there and I will have food boards in there and I will have the Roos bar is positioned better. So you know, each time you do stuff, you learn a little bit different. I’ve had the Roos bars in two [00:16:00] different positions now, and I am changing it again.
Just depends on your flock. You know what one flock likes, another one doesn’t, kind of thing.
Tonya Olson: Sounds like somebody’s about ready to lay an egg.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, pretty soon everybody’s gonna start yelling about it.
Right now, they just really like me to open the gate. They’re like, surely, you wanna let us out right now?
See, they haven’t been out for a little bit because we haven’t had any rain, and if I keep letting them out, they’re gonna destroy everything and then they won’t have anything to enjoy eating. So they’ve been having to stay in and they are not happy with me about it at all. They would like to lodge it formally lodge a complaint with, the Humane Society of America or something about the awful treatment they’re receiving.
It was funny because the the humane animal groups the greener world, they had their measurements for. How much square footage each chicken should have, both inside, outside, and that is gonna be actually humane. And so I added up what my chickens [00:17:00] have both inside and outside, and I realized that each chicken has more square footage than what they allot for a goose.
Alyssa Warner: I believe that, I think technically inside of my coop. There’s, I think I just barely meet those like small requirements, but they don’t spend almost time in the coop. And if you have a small Yeah, they just
Audra Trosper: go in low.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah. And if you have a small amount of chickens, it’s good to have a small coop because it heats better in the winter.
Audra Trosper: Exactly. Yeah. My girls ended up when I did the measurements in their run, they’re just basically, they have about a little over 22 square foot per chicken. Enjoy. So
Alyssa Warner: yeah,
Audra Trosper: they’re not overcrowded, but that doesn’t mean anything. They still need let out, every day that’s what they think anyway.
Alyssa Warner: They’re telling us.
Audra Trosper: Yeah.
Josh Wilder: So you talked a little bit about, getting to know your flock and what they like about how long would you say it takes once [00:18:00] you, let’s say you get chicks and you get them in their coop after they grow out. How long would you say it takes once they’re in the coop to kinda get a sense for what their personality is?
Coop-wise?
Audra Trosper: Coop-wise? About when they’re laying, when they’re young. They’re just kind happy to be there wherever doing their thing. It’s when they grow into their actual laying selves that they start having preferences. And they do some when they’re little, but like I said, they’re kind like little kids.
They just, they don’t really care what house they live in, as long as they can run outside and play. When they get to be growing up and have, start thinking about where they’re gonna lay, then starts bothering them.
Alyssa Warner: There’s a certain amount of reactiveness that you have to have.
Which takes, in my opinion, a little bit of the pressure out of it, because sometimes you’re just not gonna know.
Tonya Olson: It also might you might also consider if you’re, if they’re all new chicks, or if you are taking, a new little chick and introducing it to, an established flock already. That’s something to consider too.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, [00:19:00] it’s almost like any animal you have your, your time that takes ’em to settle in.
I always say at least a month before you really know, if you bring an adult chicken, you don’t know how exactly she’s gonna be. She has to have time to decompress, time to learn her place, time to learn everything before her real personality comes out. Same with dogs, cats, anything like that.
People get a new dog and they think, oh, they’re so quiet. And then a couple weeks later it’s not as quiet as it went. It’s comfortable now. You don’t get to meet the real animal until it’s been there for about a month.
Josh Wilder: So are there any last. Suggestions you might give to a person who’s, let’s say, either one way or the other, if they’re looking to source a coop or if they’re looking to build one themselves,
Alyssa Warner: paint it first.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, clean it first, or at least pretend like you’re cleaning it first. Literally get a shovel, get whatever you think you’re gonna clean with and get in there and see how well can you reach all the corners.
If it’s a prefab, if it’s one of the smaller ones, [00:20:00] how well can you reach all the corners, if the nest boxes are like sticking out the side, how insulated are they? Because if it gets really cold in the winter, if those nest boxes are gonna get really cold in the winter ’cause they’re just hanging out there in the air, how well can you fit through the door? People don’t think much about that, but what if you need to get in there and grab a hen because she’s acting off and she’s tucked in the far corner? Can you get to her? That kind of thing.
Tonya Olson: Be able to stand up inside of it. Yes.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, you don’t, oh, it’s not that big a deal.
Get in there and stand for half an hour. So see how comfortable you are. Then seriously, do all the things. People are gonna think you’re nuts. Do it anyway because you’re gonna have to live with that thing or buy a new one. And those are expensive. Even if you’re building it, let’s face it, supplies are expensive
Really, if you’re building it, go to someplace that has prefabs, crawl around in them, reach through them, do all that kind of stuff. Get an idea of what you really want and what you think you’re really gonna need before you start.
Tonya Olson: I prefer the egg nest boxes that [00:21:00] open from the back versus the top because they’re easier to clean out. That’s what I prefer as far as nest boxes, ’cause I have both of those. And the ones that you open from the top, they’re a little bit nicer for when you grab the eggs, but not to clean out.
Audra Trosper: Yeah.
Alyssa Warner: Being able to shovel all of the litter out is a very important feature.
Audra Trosper: Are messy cleaned regularly.
Alyssa Warner: And I know Josh, you asked like, how do you keep chores down to five minutes, keep less chickens? I have the smallest scoop amount of chickens and I bet my chores take about like half or less the time than your guys’ does.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, scooping out doesn’t take too long, but. I have it set up so I could just, like I said, I could take out all the nest boxes and the roosting bars.
I close the chickens out. I’ve got a little bitty screen door where their little door is so that during the summer I can leave that open, keep critters out, but air can flow through, [00:22:00] so I shut them out much. They’re disgusted and pull everything out and scoop it all out real fast. It doesn’t take long, but it does take longer than it would if I only had a smaller coop and five or six chickens.
Obviously three, three hens. And the space required. It definitely, takes more time.
Josh Wilder: They’re worth it, right?
Audra Trosper: They’re very much if
Alyssa Warner: I could have more, I would’ve Delicious. Eggs,
Audra Trosper: yes, and pretty chickens. I not getting any chickens this year. But next year I have plans.
Alyssa Warner: We were at Marble Seed and I was eating boiled eggs.
They were very good, high quality eggs, purchased from one of the vendors at this like organic farming conference. The eggs were good. I came back, I had one egg at home and I said, I’m never giving up my chickens, ever.
Audra Trosper: That’s pretty much it. I love the eggs. It’s, I love the, and I love the interaction with ’em.
Let’s face it. Getting out and working with them and stuff. It’s good. They’re so
Alyssa Warner: funny.
Audra Trosper: And they’re they have [00:23:00] so many, their own little personality quirks. People like, oh, they’re just birds. No. They each have their own personalities. It’s amazing, really. And
Alyssa Warner: I finally have a rooster who follows me into the house.
He just
Audra Trosper: walks. I really would like to have a rooster sometimes. And then other times I’m like because we are, we are well like you we’re in town. Of course, it’s a very small town and there’s a lot of space between houses, but there’s already two roosters in town that spend half the day shouting at each other.
So I dunno if I wanna add a.
Alyssa Warner: If you want a really sweet one with he, so part of me wor wonders, not worries. He’s fine wonders if he’s a little bit intersex because he’s got a really short comb and a really forced and small. So if you wanna, I’ve got two.
Audra Trosper: Oh, I don’t know. Like I said, right now everything is very peaceful in my chicken pen. So it’s one of those things like everybody gets along. Everybody’s doing their thing. Everybody’s healthy. Love you. [00:24:00] And I just don’t know that I wanna add anything to it right now.
Tonya Olson: Audra, since you don’t have any roosters, do you have a hen that assumes the rooster role?
Audra Trosper: We have one of the red hens who’s done that. She thinks she is. She, runs things. She doesn’t, because one of the other hens actually does. But every now and then she gets it into their head that she is, and then the other hen knocks her back down. But yeah, nobody tries to crow though.
We have had that happen in the past where one of our hands decided she was gonna crow and do the whole shebang. But so far, no. Everybody’s stayed. Mostly hennish.
Josh Wilder: Nice. All right.
Audra Trosper: Last year we had one that was more convinced she was a ster, but she seems to have gotten that out of her system
Alyssa Warner: oh, maybe my funky little rooster will also do that.
Who knows?
Audra Trosper: It’s possible.
Josh Wilder: All right. Thanks everybody and appreciate your time and I think one thing I’ve learned from y’all today is that coop time is quality time. So make a coop that you’ll enjoy and have a coop that the chickens will enjoy.
Thanks again. Bye.
Audra Trosper: [00:25:00] Thanks. Bye
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[00:26:00]
