We have a 10x10 coop 3 pop doors, 4 bathroom windows (salvage), no insulated but does have siding. Wood floor coverd with shavings. The only place I use hay is in the nesting boxes. I take a pooper scooper at dinner time and scoop, always dry and clean, never smells. Clean their run the same way. No heat lamp, body heat only we live in New England also. Their perches are wide so they can cover their feet during the winter. Sun comes in windows warms the coop during the day nights they huddle. Their run is completely covered. 6 dog kennel sections wrapped in chicken wire. The wire flaps at the bottom and is covered with large size rocks. The top is also covered with double chicken wire braced with wooden slats to hold the weight of the snow. They do have a heated water dish in the coop during the winter. They have a light that comes on just before dark they go in 1/2 hr lights out. Summer doors and windows stay open all day they come and go in their run/coop. Winter just after they go in (same time every night) I close all doors and open again in morning. They have 24/7 grain/cracked corn in hanging feeders but after work they get left overs any veggie/potato/meat/pastas. I warm it in winter and in summer they get watermelon, frozen yogert. yummy. We throw nothing away. Can't figure out how to post pictures.

I can't believe I started this a month ago!! Well to my defense I did get in a car accident so it was not just a case of procrastranation. I worked on the coop today and now I am really starting to see some progress. I went to Lowes and had them cut all my wood to size and that worked out great until I used the wrong pieces for the sides. It was supposed to be 30" tall and I used the left over wood for the sides by accident. It is now going to be 24" tall. oh well. I also almost put the roof on sloping down on the inside instead of outside. I was borrowing a pair of tin snips from my neighbor (the ones from the dollar store did not work) and while I was waiting for him to come back I noticed the backwards slant. Thank God I caught that in time!! Chapelhillgardner I wish I could have used that shed. Like you said it would have been a lot easier and MUCH cheaper. SO far my total is about $200 spent. It was spread over time though so it did not hurt too bad. My chickens will be so glad to get out of the basement. They are getting quite large down there. They sleep in the brooder, eat in the brooder then haul butt playing around in the cellar. Thank goodness I have a cement floor down there. I am really pleased with the progress and can not wait to post photos so I can show you guys how it came out. I guess looking at all those inspiration photos really helped. Oh I really got on here to ask a question. Inside my pen I am building a box for the chickens to sleep in. I made the whole thing out of wood. Is that going to be okay on the bottom? Should I just plan on using a lot of shavings to help with the mess? Also should I be planning on putting a water and food contraption in the box? or is having them just outside in the pen okay for when they are out. sounds dumb I know butI am not sure what to use in that small space. the box they will be sleeping in is 24" high, 30" deep and 4' wide. (I hope that is enough room for 3 chicks). can you guys give me some idea of what to use inside for food and water. Pictures help me a lot

Good advice here so far! If you Google 'keeping chickens in the city' you'll find a ton of pages with great advice also. :) I live in suburban Los Angeles and have a backyard flock. I have a coop for them at night and they roam the backyard by day. I do not allow them to jump fences or wander the neighborhood, and I keep the coop strictly clean so there is never an odor problem. You may have to trim the girls' wings at first, when they are young and are all horsepower and wing and not heavy enough to stay grounded. I always trim a new flock members' wings, by the time they have grown out again the bird has learned where it lives and doesn't roam. Make your yard the most atttractive to the chickens with lots of fresh food, water and nice nests and they'll prefer to stay home. Banties are the worst for wanting to explore, and as a general rule I trim anyone's wings whom I catch flying like a freakin' eagle. :) Usually the problem is in your cities zoning laws, and the issues with chickens fall under the noise ordinances (roosters). Also they must be housed so many feet from houses, etc. Some cities will be OK with a small number of hens, say 3, but will say 'No' to roosters because of the crowing. In my opinion hens are just as noisy or noisier during the day with all the 'Hey, I laid an egg!' cackling, but roos tend to start crowing in the pre-dawn hours. One thing you can do is to make sure and handle your birds daily--get them super tame and used to being picked up and petted. The less you allow them to run wild, the more they'll want to stay home, and if they DO hop a fence, they will be MUCH easier to catch. This also helps if they become sick or injured--trying to catch and help a wild chicken is nearly impossible. A few things you can do is check the home owners association guidelines to see if they specifically mention chickens one way or another. Check the cities zoning laws and ask the people at city hall if the homeowners association laws take precedence over city laws--I doubt if they do, so it may be that if the city says yes and the association says no--tough luck for the association! If neither one says no to chickens, talk to your neighbors--get them to sign a petition saying that they wouldn't have a problem with a small number of hens (offering fresh eggs and letting their kids come over to see the chickens is a great help in this area!) You can also see if you can get your home certified as a backyard wildlife habitat (check out the National Wildlife Federation's site), that might help protect the chickens. If you can use the birds in an educational manner (take them to local elementary schools and give a talk) that might help protect them, too since the animals are being used in an educational manner. You can also try to get them certified as therapy animals (you and your birds get some training, then you take them around to hospitals and visit patients) through the Delta Society (I'm going to see about this for some of my chickens). http://www.deltasociety.org/ So even with draconian statues, there may be ways around it, some kind of umbrella of protection for your birds. Be as sweet as pie to your neighbors and make good friends with all of the households surrounding yours and you'll most likely have no trouble from them by keeping chickens. :) Good luck! Velvet ~:>

I had a little 8'x8' garden shed built in my yard and then added the nest boxes on one side wall. I put one perch about 4' from the floor and another 2' higher and the chickens seem delighted. For the perches I used 2"x2" furring strips. At first the nest boxes were flat on top and the hens liked to roost on top of them and of course made the mess up there. So then, I added a board set at a 45 degree angle on the top of the boxes so they couldn't stand on it. Now they only roost on the perches. This keeps the night soil in the same spot and much easier to sweep out. I also specified when the shed was built, that I only wanted one door, instead of the standard shed double door design, and asked him to make it a dutch style door. This way while my chicks are small, I can confine them to the shed and still have the top half of the door open for fresh air circulation. After the shed was constructed I set steel posts into the ground and strung the chicken wire to form a 16x16' yard, with the 8'x8' shed forming one corner of the yard. As the chicks got older they liked to go under the shed in hot weather to keep cool. My gate was constructed of wood with chicken wire over the frame. Along the bottom edge of the fence, I built up the soil level about three inches to prevent predators from digging under it. Cheryl