Easy to Clean Suburban Chicken Coop FAQ

Over the past year I have received overwhelming support and feedback on my chicken coop design and construction. There have been so many wonderful comments and so many have copied this coop and made it one of their own. During this chicken coop building season (yes there is a season for these things) I have received quite a few questions on various aspects of the coop and so I thought it would be nice to run through and answer a few of the ones I hear most frequently.


Does the feed get stuck in the feeder? Does the feed spill on the ground? The feed has no trouble gravity feeding down the center pipe and into each trough on the sides. While the chickens eat they shake it a bit and the feed gently falls down where they can get to it with no trouble. Some feed does spill out, especial when the feeder is full. This has not been an issue as they scratch and peck and get at it off of the ground and also get some needed grit in the process.


Does a lot of water drip on the ground? In short, yes, however this has not really been an issue outside the coop as I have sand under it and it drains right away. Inside the coop I have a deflector that direct the extra drips into the cleanout pan and bedding.


What about ventilation? I have a small window above the nesting boxes that was not shown in the construction video. This provides good airflow in the summer. In the winter, we have the door open tot he coop all day and there are enough cracks and gaps in the siding to allow for decent air to get in.


Why dont you let them free range? We have tried letting them out in our yard a little at a time and they just do too much damage too quickly. They tear into the garden, scratch through the mulch around the trees, poop all over the grass, and eat anything we have growing in the garden. We designed the chicken tractor to move them around and let them scratch through the grass in a contained area. We also let them loose in the garden in fall when we are done growing.


How do you prevent freezing? This year we used heat tape and insulation to wrap the outside portion of the watering system. This was not sufficient to keep the inside portion thawed as well when we had sustained temps below 0 degrees. I will redesign and only heat the inside portion this year. video to follow.


What would you do differently? First I would make the cleanup tray access door about 2 inches larger to allow for a heaping pile of bedding to fit out on top of the tray when I pull it though (suggested by a subscriber, thanks!). I would also have used larger door latches instead of those cheap bolt locks on the chicken run door. Lastly, I would have raised the nesting boxes up about 4 inches from the main coop floor.


Is the cleanout tray needed and worth it? This is completely up to you. I personally love it and I think it makes it so easy to just pull it out on the wheel barrow and take it back to dump it. You can just leave it out and pull up the wheel barrow next tot he coop and sweep the bedding out. Either way it is still super easy to clean.


I hope that helps answer some of the common questions. If you have any comments or questions I did not answer please let me know!

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Pallet Garden Update and FAQ How Did They Hold Up

How did the reclaimed pallet wood garden beds hold up? It has been a year since we have put these free raised beds into action and they have done us well so far. Throughout the last year this project has become fairly popular and there have been some common questions that I thought I would try to answer here.

Will the pallet wood  hold up to moister over the long term? This is a very valid concern and one that I, quite honestly, shared as well. They have only been through one year so far but as far as I can tell they have held up perfectly. I do not see any signs of rotting where the soil has been in contact with the wood and the outside of the wood has aged nicely. Only time will tell the full story here but I would guess we can get about 5 years out of these before we start noticing any issues.





Arent pallets treated with chemicals that are unsafe for your garden? The wood that we are using from the pallets was all heat treated and this is something you should look for when using it for food production. We also lined the first set of beds with greenhouse plastic since the wood had some oil staining on it we didnt want in the soil.





What soil mix are we using? Last year we decided to try the square foot gardening method with these raised beds. With that came using the Mels mix soil mixture that consists of 1/3 compost 1/3 peat and 1/3 vermiculite. This is a very nice soil mix however it can get pretty expensive to fill beds of this size and vermiculite is hard to source locally. We ended up having to order ours online  and it was not cheap! In an effort to keep costs down after we had already ordered the vermiculite we ended up probably not putting in enough compost and good nutrients and added more peat as a filler. Needless to say in the end the growth we had was not stellar. We were happy with our little gardens but this year we want to focus on filling them for less and increasing production.

I will have another article soon with our new method of soil fill for the four new pallet beds that I have just built, stay tuned for more on that. We are focusing on locally sourced and bulk materials rather than as much big box store products.





Do you put landscape cloth in the bottom of the beds? This question comes up often and then answer to that is yes and no. With the two original beds I put together I did line the bottom with cardboard before I filled it up. However, I do feel that this is largely unnecessary and I dont think it really serves a purpose.





Would you use screws rather than nails to construct these next time? I was surprised at how well the nails held up with the original two that I constructed and so I continued to use nails with the rest that I have built. The fact is, I suppose screws would hold better in the long run but that brings up the cost significantly since you need quite a lot of screws for each one. I used drywall nails that I had laying around for the first few and some roofing nails for the rest and they seem to hold up just fine.

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Music - "Epilogue" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/Epilogue

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