Backyard Chickens

Chapter 1: The Integrated Approach: Coop Design Meets Flock Health

You can build a beautiful coop. You can build one that looks like a tiny barn, a Victorian potting shed, or a sleek modern cabin. You can use cedar siding and copper flashing and spend three weekends getting the joinery just right. And in eighteen months, you can lose half your flock to a respiratory infection that started because you didn't have enough intake ventilation at roost level, or you can find a hen eviscerated at dawn because your "predator-proof" wire was actually 1-inch chicken wire that a raccoon reached through and pulled apart like a zipper.

This book is not about pretty coops. It is about coops that keep birds alive. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are not the same thing, and the difference is almost always in the details that you cannot see from the curb. The angle of the roost bar. The cubic feet of air exchange per minute. The gauge of the wire, not the mesh size. The latch that a raccoon can’t figure out with its remarkably dexterous paws.

I have built every bad coop you can imagine. I have used chicken wire and paid the price. I have built a coop with perfect ventilation on paper that turned into a sauna in July because I didn’t account for the radiant heat of the metal roof. I have lost birds to mites that overwintered in a crack I didn’t seal, and I