I live is a suburb of Dallas, Texas. I have 20 chickens in my back yard. No roosters but I get plenty of eggs. They have thier own A-frame coop with 2 levels and a fenced 14x14 play yard that is covered by mesh. (did that part after a hawk tried to eat one of my babies) They don't smell and dont attract flies. We just keep a layer of hay in the coop and dump hay or grass clipping in the play yard to mulch. I have never had a complaint from any of the neighbors about smells or noise. The 5 rabbits I have out there smell more than the chickens do.

Another trick we used to use, more on the ducks and geese but also on the chickens. If you take each bird and trim the feathers off one wing but leave the other side normal they can not fly around the coop. Don't cut the wing tissue, just the 3-4 inches of feather tip. With one wing providing more lift they can not balance, they sort of hop/fly up the roost but no more than that.

I'm planning to have both, with the coops for my breeding flocks and egg layers and the field houses for meat birds. I currently have all the chickens in field houses, which are good for hot weather but would be dangerous in very cold weather, which we sometimes get (ice storms). If I keep any birds in the field houses during winter after I get the coops built, I'll restrict myself to rose comb breeds out there, because they are able to weather the cold better.

Here's the field house again:

Hi all,
say a post earlier that was asking about winter heating for the birds. Here is a little solution from a fellow up in Wisconson, if I remember rightly, who used this for his birds and reported a moderate temperature even in winter time conditions.
Enclosed coop with standard above ground roost. Use aluminum backed styrofoam above the roast to form an A. The styrofoam/aluminum will trap the body heat of the birds and keep them comfortable. An easy soultion and cheap.
Now here in Oklahoma, my coop is well insulated and draft free plus I have electricity so I put a small radiator heater in with the goils and they do just fine.
He who counts his chickens before they hatch is actually a smart fellow as when they hatch they go running about and makes it hard to count
Mark Twain

We have had chickens since around 1977, and keep them year-round. Our coop has electricity, for a small compact flourescent in the ceiling. We had frozen feet and combs years ago when we had a mix of colored and white hens, both full sized and banties. Now we keep larger dark breeds and have had really good luck with Black Austrolorps--not much problem with freezing combs, etc. (but maybe winters aren't as bad as they used to be.) The chicken coop is enclosed but not really tight, and I make sure they have feed all the time, with more grain available in the winter. I give them warm water morning and evening, and put it in one of the black rubbery bowls that I get at the local farm store. The thick rubbery walls of the bowl have some insulation value, much better for sure than a metal bowl. I have tried a heated bowl and decided it wasn't worth the bother as long as I gave them fresh water twice a day. I don't think it freezes for a couple of hours, and they all crowd around it as soon as I knock out the ice and fill it with fresh warm (from the house hot water tap) water.

Biggest problem that we have in winter is eggs freeezing in the nests during the day on a really cold day.
By the way, I'm in Western Wisconsin, almost straight east of Minneapolis/St Paul, and it gets to 20 below frequently, and 30 below on occassion, and sometimes it gets to 40 below in the winter.

Here's the new coop I'm building for my laying hens.

Excellent work! I especially like the easy access to the egglaying area.

Here's the finished duplex coop and pens:

As promised on the planning thread, here's my design for the chicken run.

I used #10 re-mesh 4' wide of the type normally used for concrete work. It has 6"X6" squares. I cut 3 equal lengths of 28' and then wired the edges together to form a triangle section 28' long. I had previously used this setup as a dog run for a yellow lab with wanderlust.

I then draped this on all three sides with regular chicken wire with wire ties every foot all around. I put 4'X4' plywood on one end to form a weather enclosure with gray PVC pipe mounted for roosts.

The whole thing can be dragged from place to place to give fresh foraging as needed and the floor is wire as well to keep the coyotes out.

Feel free to comment on the design. I need to learn as much as I can. The birds will take up residence there sometime in early February, so that will be the real test.

A question as well. Is there any reason I can't park this thing next to any ant hill I find and let the chicks take care of them? I'm thinking that chickens win that battle.

Thanks, Ludi! Your response raised a couple more questions for me though:

1) How often do you move a portable coop? I like the idea of the Chicken tractor, but figured that a newbie like myself would end up with a lot of torn up pasture. That, and most of them look pretty heavy.

2) How bad are the winters in your part of Texas? Does your coop work for winter housing as well? It gets a bit cold up this way. In fact, I'd originally planned to get some Chantecleurs or Buckeyes because their small combs are less prone to frostbite.

After years in IT, I know I should always plan to throw the first plan away, but I'd prefer to have to build a coop once and be done with it while I get everything else settled.

Thanks again!

I always try to move mine before they tear up the turf. You could ballpark it based on my experience. My coop has 120sq.ft. of floor and it takes 6 hens about a week to graze it down from long grass. That would give 20sq.ft./week/hen.

Any other opinions?

Our present field pens are 8'x12' and need two people (or one strong person) to move - I think they are too large and I'll make the next ones 8x10 or even 8x8 so I can move them myself. We move them daily. Ours contain up to 10 mature chickens or up to 25 growing chickens.

It can get down to the lower teens here, with ice storms, but not usually below the lower 20s. These open coops are only suitable for warm climates. A more enclosed coop could work in a colder climate, but I would still go for the rose combs. I'm choosing only rose comb breeds for our field houses from now on. We have Dominiques this year and so far I'm extremely happy with their foraging abilities, intelligence, and lack of aggression toward each other. I also like Dark Cornish a lot.

Ludi, that is a truly kick-arse chicken cage.

For some reason, in Australia movable chicken coops are known as 'chicken tractors', possibly because they are mobile and are used to turn up the ground. The problems with tearing up pasture are generally compensated for by the manure the chickens leave.

One thing to note about any shelter: make sure it's not totally shaded over. I built a shelter totally roofed with shadecloth and had terrible problems with rickets (lack of vitamin D due to not enough sunlight). The chickens' bones didn't grow properly and they couldn't stand due to weak legs - they had to be put down.

Another thing: chickens are a lot more intelligent than you'd like to think. They can burrow a few inches to push under chicken wire fences, or fly through small gaps in the roof. Chicken Run is a documentary, not a work of fiction! If you look at Ludi's picture, you'll see that the edges contacting the ground are rigid - that stops the chickens from pushing out the wire to make a gap large enough to push through. (Due to a lack of such material, I pinned the edge of my cage to the ground using tent pegs).

Making the rigid sections from polyethylene or aluminium pipe will help cut down on weight. Most commercial movable cages have a handle at one end and wheels on the corners at the opposite end - this way, you lift the handle and wheel the thing around on two wheels. Works well on flat ground, but a bitch on slopes.

You guys are talking me into a portable coop. Which is almost a shame. I realized this evening that I have 2 animal shelters which I could adapt as coops. They're already covered and closed on 3 sides. The previous owner kept horses and the ground is already pretty chewed up around them, so a chicken run couldn't make it much worse.

I like the portable idea, though. Not sure I trust my construction skills to make one that is one-man portable and works on my lumpy pasture AND will provide adequate protection in winter. Still, a 2x4 base and a PVC frame ought to be pretty easy to make. I think I even have some old lawn mower wheels in the garage. Even if it doesn't work for winter, it buys me some time to figure out a permanent solution.

It's not a bad idea to have a stationary coop as well, for setting hens or sick or injured birds. I've found no matter how many pens I build I always seem to need more! But then I'm always acquiring more chickens...

Kfish makes a good point about making sure the chickens have access to direct sunlight. They should have both sun and shade.

One thing I found necessary on both stationary and portable pens is a flap of wire along the bottom to prevent raccoons from digging under. I also put 1/2 inch hardware cloth around the bottom 2' of pens to keep the varmints from reaching through and grabbing the chickens. They'll actually work in teams to do this - one will spook the chickens into a corner, where the other one will pull chicken parts through the wire and eat them. They'll eat an entire leg off a chicken, leaving the poor thing alive. Chickens are amazingly tough and will actually survive this kind of horror to be found sitting legless and alive in the morning.