The Truth About Chicken Coops: Best Designs, Winter Prep & Why You NEED Multiple Pens

Welcome back, Poultry Nerds!
In this jam-packed episode, Carey and Jennifer dive deep into chicken coop design, comparing fixed coops vs. chicken tractors, winter preparation, predator management, bird density, and how chicken math ALWAYS wins.

Whether you’re designing your first backyard coop or upgrading your serious breeding setup, this episode arms you with practical, real-world advice on:

• Choosing between tractors and stationary coops
• Winterizing your birds’ housing
• Keeping flocks stress-free for better egg production & chick vigor
• Managing rats, predators, wind, and weather
• Why you ALWAYS end up needing more than one pen
• Coop planning mistakes we’ve learned the hard way
• How livestock, goats, pigs & other animals affect your setup
• Spacing, bird density, ground maintenance & disease prevention
• Why tractors make your grass GREENER (yes, really!)

If you want healthier birds, better production, and a coop setup that grows WITH your flock, this is a must-listen.

Join Carey of Show Pro Farm Supply and Jennifer of Bryant's Roost as we delve into chickens and quail (mostly)  to help you enjoy your birds more and worry less. Backyard chicken keeping shouldnt be stressfull, let's get back to the simple days

IncubationMAsterclass.com is an online course designed to walk with you during your incubation journey to maximize your efforts.  Invest in yourself with Incubaiton Masterclass

Transcript

Carey: 0:39

Welcome poultry nerds. On today's episode, we are gonna talk about chicken coop design, because I have been getting asked a lot of questions and so has Jennifer, and if you're listening to this when it airs, originally I'll be in November when it's starting to get colder or is cold. Depending on what day it is, because last week it was in the thirties. Today it's pushing 80, so you know, you never know, but we're gonna talk about that and some different ways to give your chickens the stress-free life to where they can give you the most egg production, the most vigorous chicks, all the good stuff.

Jennifer: 1:29

So would you believe that in less than four months, it'll be chick days at the box stores again already?

Carey: 1:37

So I see that promos coming up. But not long ago, I was in the old tractor place and I heard chicks.

Jennifer: 1:49

Really?

Carey: 1:50

And I'm like it's. This was two weeks ago, so I was like, it's supposed to be 30 next week. I got chicks. But I saw on Facebook a post, a video from a pretty well known hatchery that they were like boxing up their chicks for their last shipping day. And I think that was last week too yeah. But this year it's. It's been a record deal for chicks'cause everybody wants chicks.

Jennifer: 2:25

This year has been extremely odd. We have sold more than ever, shipped more than ever, and it really never quite slowed down to the last couple weeks really. But. This generally, we'll just take 20, 25 out of the equation right now. Generally, right now we're prepping for holidays. We're prepping for breeders. We're dreaming of the coops that we wanna build for the spring chicks we're gonna buy. I see breeders are putting together their wait lists and their pre-orders and the hatcheries are doing the same thing. Yeah. I thought let's you know for everybody that's redesigning or designing their coops, maybe we could offer our 2 cents on some things we have learned over the years and things we would change if we were to do'em over. So my first thing was to compare contrast. Fixed structures like coops with runs to chicken tractors and we both have both.

Carey: 3:39

Yeah, and I gotta say I'm a huge fan of both. They both have their place. I really like chicken tractors because you can cram a lot of birds in there. You can move'em to a fresh salad every day or two so you don't wind up with a smelly mess when it rains. There's a lot of pluses to it. Moving them every day can also be one of the negatives'cause that's a lot of work.

Jennifer: 4:11

I have some pretty elaborate coops I would say.'cause David likes to build me really nice stuff and yeah. Mine are approaching six years old at this point. If I. Could go back with the knowledge that I have right now. I would not have them. I would do all tractors, believe it or not. I would, first of all of course I have AUMA coops because you taught me into'em and I love them now and they're pricey. But even at that price point, they are significantly cheaper than what I was built.

Carey: 4:56

Yeah. I had somebody ask me about'em the other day after another show, and I was like, look. If you're looking for a cheap way out, then you need to keep looking. But if you want a one and done, I don't have to worry about this thing for eight or 10 plus years, then Illumina Co may be the thing for you because, I have built some pens lately and by the time you factor in wire, post, post holes. Wire aerial netting. Oh, a place for them to hide from the weather. What you're gonna do with the ground to keep it in shape, to make sure you don't oversaturate it with too many cute chicks. All that stuff. You're monetarily, you're right about the same. But then if you like to think that your labor is worth something, then you're gonna spend more money building something than you would get an A loom coop hour and a half, probably for your first one. Put it together and roll it around.

Jennifer: 6:19

There's other things that I didn't even think of when I was making our outline as far as the fixed coops. Now I really like my fixed coops, but you do have to have some ground management as far as the runs are concerned in order to keep grass in'em. Yeah. But we get droughts and then there's nothing you can do at that point. It just turns to dirt. But when you have a fixed coop and a fixed run, then you have to mow around it. You have to weed eat around it. You have to reed inside of it. You have to. Maintain the netting and the wire and make sure predators can't get into it. And you have to deal with rat tunnels because it's all fixed, it's all stationary. And the critters know that too. So

Carey: 7:04

everybody likes chicken.

Jennifer: 7:06

Yeah. And so while I really do like my fixed coops, there, there is maintenance that goes along with it that you wouldn't have with the tractors. Now we both have Olima cos but there are other tractors out there. I think Joel Saladin has a nice one that has a blueprint that you can get offline or something. If you live in a very windy area, you need to keep that in mind. And you need to build it to your weather basically.

Carey: 7:36

Yeah.

Jennifer: 7:37

But if you're mowing the field and you move the tractor, then you don't have anything to weed about weed, eat around, you can just move it and keep on mowing. So there's less maintenance just there. And because you're moving it a lot, the rats don't ever get a chance to make a comment, figure out where

Carey: 8:00

it is. Yeah, exactly.

Jennifer: 8:02

And then once you move it, of course, I've got 50 million ducks running around out there. So once you move it, the ducks clean up any feed that might've been s spilled. And if a, if an egg gets crushed or something, the dog cleans that up.

Carey: 8:17

Oh yeah, that'll clean that out quick.

Jennifer: 8:19

Yeah. So there's nothing left. You just have basically. Green stripes in the field. Ultimately I have a field set aside that I have planted a bunch of apple trees in, and now granted they're only like four feet tall right now. But my plan is to run the tractors between the rows of fruit treat. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm

Carey: 8:43

excited. I started tracking across my front yard a couple years ago because my, I couldn't do anything to get my grass to look decent. And I had these tractors I was wanting to demo and try out, so I was like, Hey, you know what? Bump it. Let's do it. Put a couple of chickens in here. Bam. I did that for the two years in a row, and this year, now that it's starting to get cold and some of the grass is starting to die, my wife was like, Hey. Can you figure out a way to mark that and next year make sure you hit that spot? Because I still have green grass in January.

Jennifer: 9:23

Wow.

Carey: 9:24

Yeah, it's pretty nice.

Jennifer: 9:26

So your lot is a lot smaller than my, because I have a farm and cows and everything else. So you live more in town, so is the tractor moving an issue for you on the smaller space?

Carey: 9:40

No.

Jennifer: 9:41

No,

Carey: 9:41

it's just like anything else. You don't overpopulate it and you keep it going. The ones that I have in my front yard, they're five by six, which, you say five by six, that's tiny, you can comfortably I've had 10 full grown chickens in there and not had any issues because I moved them every other day, no buildup of poo or nothing like that. Which 10 is a lot for that area. But I wanted to see the limits and I wanted to see what the recommendations was and how it actually applied to real life. Because lots of manufacturers like to say, oh, you can put 50 million chickens in this and move them every 10 minutes. Or less. So I wanted to try the numbers and see how it really was. And it actually wasn't bad. Now, I did not have broilers, which are just poop machines. I had actual, like laying a laying flock that had a rooster in there, it worked out great. Never had problems with rat tunnels, nothing like that. And I have clocked 73 mile an hour wind on my property with no issues with the tractors. So there's always that too. Pretty solid.

Jennifer: 11:04

Yep. The back to the keeping the greenery, one thing I have noticed in my fixed runs is, of course the chickens eat the grass and the Yeah.

Carey: 11:16

The good

Jennifer: 11:16

stuff. The clover and stuff, and they leave the weeds. And I have ended up with big sections of the run being overtaken with this red. Thorny thing. I don't even know what it's called, but I know it is the fire outta, so

Carey: 11:30

this is what you need to do for that.

Jennifer: 11:32

What

Carey: 11:32

You have said you got too many goats, right?

Jennifer: 11:36

They won't even eat this thing. Goat got thorns on it.

Carey: 11:41

Hey, mine will eat anything. Oh, Like I've seen mine eat. I saw mine eating a dead stump and I'm like, homie, you have primo non GMO grain feed. In your trough, why are you eating a dead piece of wood? And my wife goes, it's probably got some bugs in it.

Jennifer: 12:04

And

Carey: 12:04

I just looked at her'cause that was something I would say.'cause like when, they're messing around in the yard and stuff, but they're not eating the grass, eh, probably bugs, you probably didn't notice.

Jennifer: 12:17

Last time you were here because we were busy like recording and stuff. But my goat population has dwindled significantly. I think it was like,

Carey: 12:26

I noticed there wasn't as many there, but you Hey, I'm even

Jennifer: 12:30

damn more. I have four. I know, right? I'm so excited. So my son and his wife and kids live across the street and they, they bought this property that is somebody planted bamboo, which is a whole nother story, but I think they actually sold the property'cause they didn't know what to do with all the bamboo. It's just like taking over everything. And I was like, huh, you really need goats. So we banded all the boys from the spring and took'em over there and he's oh man, this rocks.'cause he doesn't like to mow grass. And so he is this rocks, and then. Of course I have a problem with, here's another thing you should think about too. If you have goats and you have chickens, of course I have giant chickens, right? And I have dwarf goats, so they're about the same size. So I can't, not a lot of difference. I can't make the door to my main coop. Any smaller otherwise five won't be able to crouch to get my big rooster in the back, his name is five. He won't be able to crouch to get into the coop anymore'cause he already has to wiggle in there because I can't make it any smaller and I can't keep the darn goats out. So I gave up, just opened the big door. And the goats keep going in there and then they get all excited and they step on my chickens and they end up breaking toes and breaking legs and different things. And so I just got mad and sent all the baby goats across the street. So now I just have the four nanny goats here and they don't bother my chickens.

Carey: 14:08

Over there you could take a tractor or something and outline the property. Put up some hot wire, turn them suckers loose. They'll have it under control in no time.

Jennifer: 14:20

Oh yeah. So he's, I think they have, I had 13 and I have four left, so they've got nine over there now, and the kids are just loving them. They buy animal crackers and they go outside and feed'em animal crackers.

Carey: 14:34

That works out great. I need to find a co. I need to find a couple females. A couple of those.

Jennifer: 14:41

I can't do that. You had all males in the spring, so that's not, works not easy. That would be actually another thing to consider if you have other livestock that, how those are gonna interact with your coop. So for example, last year had the bright idea to wean my piglets. And put them in my runs and let them root up all the rat tunnels and stuff, and it worked fantastic. The problem is piglets grow, I don't know, 50% a day it seems like. So by the time they went through all 12 of my runs, which was an experience moving them from run to run, they had torn up quite a bit of fence. So we will not be doing that again. Of course I got rid of

Carey: 15:31

pigs. I discovered something the other day. Apparently one of my other pigs was pregnant.

Jennifer: 15:37

Oh no. So how many do you have now?

Carey: 15:41

Like four littles. They're like the size of this water bottle.

Jennifer: 15:45

Oh my goodness.

Carey: 15:46

And they're already eating feed.

Jennifer: 15:51

I told you if you sprinkle them with water, you get more pigs

Carey: 15:55

apparently.

Jennifer: 15:57

I told you so

Carey: 15:59

I got a IBC tote, put it upside down, put a feeder in it just for the little pigs because pigs are pigs. And I had to put a couple concrete blocks on top of it. Because the others were trying to move it and actually anchor it to the ground. But now my, now the little one's running there to get away from the big ones and to eat, and it works out great. But again, that's all things like if you have those or goats or whatever, that's all you stuff you should think about when you think about your chickens and how you're gonna set up, if you're gonna do runs or if you're gonna do tractors or you know what, you need to think about your goals and what you have and you need to make sure everything works together. And

Jennifer: 16:51

And an as animal math takes over, as we talk about goats and pigs and stuff, tractors are movable and if you build structure, you're kinda built, in there. So just a side note,'cause we don't ever do side notes, didn't you at one point have your Coney in the Illumina coop?

Carey: 17:10

Yes.

Jennifer: 17:11

How'd that work?

Carey: 17:13

It actually worked great. And on that subject, they actually have a kit now that you can get that's designed to welt pigs. It has like little sections in it, welting station, water, all that stuff for the little piglets. And I did get a thank you for that idea. Because I was like the third or fourth person that had tried that. So they started developing into a little further to make it a thing. They're built solid. I had pigs that weighed 15, 20 pounds that ran pretty strong that was running out of their pen. And I, one of them ran through a dip net, broke a. Like less than two week old dip net. And so I was like, bump this. I'm gonna keep y'all safe. You're going into Theum Co with the chickens. And it was hilarious watching them drink out of a place Bell Water.'cause once they figured out there was water in it, they would go push it and as it would tilt, the water would come out and they'd just drink it.

Jennifer: 18:25

Interesting.

Carey: 18:25

Yeah. I wouldn't try that with big pigs though. They'd chew on it.

Jennifer: 18:31

Okay, so let's talk about, now that we've done pros and cons of the two let's talk about why you really need more than one. Even though you think right now that you only need four laying hands, that will never happen. We're just here to tell you that will never happen. You will end up with 22. So you need more than one pen for various reasons. First and foremost would,

Carey: 19:49

At this point, you're 20 minutes into this podcast and we're enablers.

Jennifer: 19:54

Yes.

Carey: 19:55

Yeah we will admit it. And when you say, I'm getting four, like she said, 20, 30, maybe. Heck, years ago I convinced my wife. To let me get a couple of chickens so we could save money on eggs. And she's just ignored it ever since

Jennifer: 20:15

we started with 10. Yeah. Okay, so there's a couple reasons why you need more than one pen. The biggest one that, my biggest reason for more than one pen is going to be flock security. So if you have your flock divided between two pens that are, say more than 10 feet apart. Preferably if one gets sick, the other one won't get sick. Hopefully, if one gets eaten by predators, the other one won't because the predator will be full before it needs to go into the second one. If you forgot and left the door open and they all escaped and flew away to the neighbor's yard, you still have the other one. Because remember, not only are you investing in the coop. In the structure, you're investing in genetics in birds in your time, and you sure as heck don't wanna be starting over from chicks every time something goes wrong because I'm here to tell you something will go wrong. Oh

Carey: 21:29

yeah.

Jennifer: 21:30

So

Carey: 21:31

It's not, when something happens, it's not if a predator will get one of your chickens it's when. Because I have a not very large yard and two very large dogs, and I still have stuff trying. I had about two weeks ago a coyote. We've never had coyotes. Get this close and buddy, the black and white brindle looking color anole. Scaled a 50 inch tall fence, not making any noise but him running. And then I saw him in the field beside me, square off. And then I saw this huge white mass coming up on the other side, like it was flanking. That was Lucy. And I just walked away. And both my dogs came back home. The coyote, it did not work out real well for that one, and I had no clue. Like I, it's a 50 inch tall fence, but I don't know if it was Billy and Bobby that they were protecting, or if it was the chickens or the turkeys or me. Because I was outside when this thing was approaching, but they did their job. They earned their kibble, that's for sure. But even at having those measures in place, something's still gonna try to get in, whether it's a coyote, raccoon, possum, whatever it is, because everybody and everything loves chicken.

Jennifer: 23:24

Rats. Mice, they'll chew on their toes. Yeah. It's, they'll chew on their pales. It's everything. Yeah. And they are coming. Don't listen to all the people who are like, oh, pick up your food at night and you won't have any trouble. That is not true. Mice are gonna, yeah. You just

Carey: 23:40

having trouble that you see.

Jennifer: 23:43

Yes.

Carey: 23:43

You see all the rat poop around the feeder because they're cleaning it out. They're there.

Jennifer: 23:48

Yes. It is what it is. You have feed, you're gonna have mice. But back to why you want more than two pens. So you're gonna end up so in February you're gonna buy your first chicks and then they're gonna grow up and start laying around June or July. And then chicken math will take over and you're gonna buy some more chicks. And then you're gonna take in your friend's birds because she, has to move and has to get rid of her birds. So you're gonna take those in and they bought too

Carey: 24:16

many.

Jennifer: 24:16

Yeah. And then you're gonna have to figure out how to merge those two coops, flocks. And then you got different ages and they got two flocks, and now you're trying to put'em together. And you've got to introduce'em to each other and quarantine'em. So there's your two coops right there. And then you're gonna need dog kennels in order in case you got a broody hen with some chicks. You gotta keep her separate or somebody's toe got squished and so you gotta put her in hospital and watch her toe and see what's gonna happen. Or. They got into a fight and their comb is bloody. I'm just letting you know right now that combs get bloody. It's not a big deal. Just no, there

Carey: 24:56

It don't matter what breed you have. A lot of people say, oh, certain, only certain chickens fight.

Jennifer: 25:00

No,

Carey: 25:00

You put, you could have 20 male chickens in a pen and everything's fine. You let them hear. A hen make a noise, boom, we gotta have a pecking order. And they will establish that crap real fast. Now, once it's done. But the one that got picked on so much it, if you don't move, it is not gonna work out real good.

Jennifer: 25:33

Combs bleed profusely, but it's not, it looks worse than it is. Yeah. And then also the next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna forget there's difference between large file and bantams, and you're gonna end up with giant orpingtons and some silkies, and those aren't gonna go together real well. So you're gonna need two pens, one for each of those.

Carey: 25:55

One for the orpingtons to lay the nice big pretty eggs and one for the silkies to hatch'em.

Jennifer: 26:01

Yeah, exactly. So regardless if you think we're serious or not, plan space for two pens. Try to do'em 10 feet apart. And if you think we're crazy, then just say, okay, I'm gonna do it anyway. And that way I can just rotate. The pasture so they can eat all the grass in one while you reseed and straw the other one, and then move them to the other one. And that way they always have fresh grass to eat while they're in their run.

Carey: 26:33

Oh, you do that and you'll have an amazing flock. That'll be healthy living, good pumping out eggs 24 7 365. Like all the things you want because you're giving them fresh pasture all the time.

Jennifer: 26:49

Yep. And then all y'all that are telling us that we're crazy right now, that you would never do that. I want you to email us next fall and let us know how many chicks you got. And how much you wanna talk about chickens.

Carey: 27:03

Right now I only got about 15 chicks.

Jennifer: 27:07

We are not gonna talk about what I've got. Okay, so I guess the last commentary would be on bird density. Just don't overpopulate your pens. It causes a lot of problems. It causes a lot of sickness. It causes pecking order problems, it causes fighting and it, the ammonia builds up. It's just a hot mess. So if you truly only want four birds by, or build a coop for eight, so they have plenty of space, don't buy the minimum. And then go from there, because you don't wanna cram 10 chickens into a four by four prebuilt in box

Carey: 27:55

coop. I'm gonna tell you right now you figure out how many chickens you want and then you need to figure 15 feet square feet per chicken minimum. For a couple reasons. Number one, everybody recommends 10, and by the time chicken math happens, you might get there, but like she said, you, you build it adequate for double at least one and a half times what you're thinking, double if possible, that way when it happens, you're ready. You know that's what I did. I recently put in a couple of stationary pens that I'm using. One's gonna be for a rather large, I have two large breeding programs for birds and they'll be in those,'cause they've got the aerial nets and all that kind of stuff. But I've also, I'm at about one bird every 18, 19 feet and I got a bunch of random stupid stuff that I put in'em. I've got an old above ground pool ladder. I've got some saw horses that are different heights that I've made. Put some stuff in there that they can get on, even if it's just playing King of the Mountain. I have in one of my pens, the bottom of a 55 gallon drum, like it's 10 inches deep or something like that. And you would think, that's heavy. They're not gonna knock it over the bull crap. I have seen them up on top of it. I've seen them in it and I've seen it on its side. But if you get crap like that for them to play with, they're not gonna be as abusive to each other.

Jennifer: 29:59

Dirt baths too. Make sure they have loose dirt to play in all the time.

Carey: 30:04

I go through mine with a rotor tiller and lime pretty regular. Yeah.

Jennifer: 30:08

Oh, and that's the other thing we didn't hit on. If you have a fixed coop, you've got to reed it and clean it all the time. If you have a tractor, you just move it and mow it.

Carey: 30:18

Yeah. And I, on that note, I suggest you to do it right the first time. Because if you bed that sucker right the first time, you're gonna spend a little bit more money. But the maintenance that you have to do through it over the years is gonna be little instead of a lot, because I have some that I spent the money and I put peat moss and I put sand and I put stall pellets and all kinds of crap in there, probably 10 inches thick. And I ain't done crap to them since. Except throw some lime on it. Really thick, hit it with a rotor tiller and move to the next, and that's just because I don't want any kind of disease in my dirt. And you

Jennifer: 31:07

through a lot of lime here, we're actually tilling all of them tomorrow.

Carey: 31:10

Where there's poop, there's gonna be disease. Which is why I don't like feeding on the ground. That's another podcast.

Jennifer: 31:17

Okay, so because we're gonna get lots of messages. I know. Illumina cos yes, we talk about Illumina cos'cause we both have them. Carrie is actually a dealer. You can contact him if you want one. You can build them with. Cattle wire and tarps and cheaper. What I will say on all of that stuff is make sure that you are physically able to move them. So consider that before you build them out of heavy wood. That, that you can physically move them if you decide to go with the tractor. So that is a consideration to go with those.'cause I have had tractors before that David built me that I couldn't move if my life depended on it. It was so heavy. So make sure that you can do that. And then if you decide to do the stationary, just try to plan it accordingly, that as you grow that

Carey: 32:11

it

Jennifer: 32:11

still works for you.

Carey: 32:13

So if you do the stationary, make sure that you do it. Put a little extra time into planning it and make sure that you do it right the first time. Otherwise, you'll be mad at yourself for redoing so much in the pen to begin with. Make sure. Another thing that's probably big is don't overcrowd it. Overcrowding your chicken pens probably leads to more disease problems and maintenance problems than anything else.

Jennifer: 32:46

And there's no way to keep the rats out. There's no amount of bearing it. Mine is in concrete. There is no amount of bearing it. They will come in and just borrow inside of it. They are the smartest. Critters I think that I have ever battled. And it's a battle. They live in the gravel bed underneath of my concrete slab of my barn, and there's nothing you can do about it. The barn's 30 by 50. What are you gonna do about it? So they're there. You just control them as best you can.

Carey: 33:22

Yep.

Jennifer: 33:23

So anyway, we'll leave that for another day or you can text us.

Carey: 33:28

Yep.

Jennifer: 33:29

But make sure

Carey: 33:30

you like and follow us. Check us out on our social medias. You can send us messages there. Carry it at and Jennifer at poultry and nerd podcast.com. You can email us directly if you don't care which one of us answers your questions. Send it to info@poultrynerdspodcast.com and the first one to see it. We'll get back to you as soon as possible. Until then, we'll see you next time.

Jennifer: 33:57

All right. Bye.