Permies Poll: Raised Chicken Coop vs Walk-in Chicken Coop

I really like my raised chicken coop. It provides more room underneath it in the attached chicken run to provide a shaded and protected space for my hens to occupy. They have turned it into their dust bath area and I will frequently find them in a 'chicken puddle' in this space.



I feel that it is "safer" because it is raised up and the entry doors are at hip height. I do deep bedding so I don't need to physically go into the coop often and for cleanouts I just bring a wheelbarrow over to my double doors and pull out the material for a rake.

The one downside is a few of my hens like to lay eggs in the FAR corner that is not easily reached but I have become handy with a long handled hoe and can retrieve those eggs without issue.

I have a walk-in duck house, and it's really convenient for cleaning, adding bedding, and finding eggs.

My neighbors gave us their raised chicken coop years ago. It's hard to get the eggs if the chickens lay them in a weird corner. It's hard to remove poopy bedding. When I'm removing bedding, it's right in my face, so I really need a mask. My kids struggle to get the eggs, especially when they were shorter. We all need a crate to stand on to actually access the coop.

The raised chicken coop frustrated me so much that I actually made a thread, how do you clean/manage the litter in a small, raised coop?. Here's some pictures from it to illustrate my love for walk-in coops.

The raised chicken coop. Free is good, but I wish it was easier to manage!

Interior of my duck house. My son could get eggs even when he was just 3 years old. He loved it!

We used the 'run' as more coop, but the chickens still laid in the top. Small children have no chance of getting the eggs...unless they climbed up the ramp and in through the chicken door...which they did!

I think there are ways to make a raised coop more accessable. Maybe the roof could come off. Or there's access from every side. Or the whole side pops off so you can scrape out the bedding. Mine has none of those advantages. I only access it from the tops of the nesting boxes, and usually end up just shoving their bedding through their little door down to the bottom.

Apparently, mine did come with a way to open a whole side. But, it was really hard to work and you had to screw and unscrew it to access the interior. We never used it.

Pretty sure the pressboard was supposed to be removable. But, it had to be unscrewed to remove. We never used it.

I only have one "coop" that would be considered  raised. One wall panel does come off for cleaning, but it's quite finickity. At my size, reaching the back is a nuisance. There's a water access door that's easy to use and double swing doors that are also easy to manage. This shelter is quite small and needs bedding. We only use it for sitting ducks/chickens - it's secure and as soon as babies are born, we try to get them into some alternative.

We have a bunch of portable walk-in shelters. They're too heavy for me to move, but they chickens like them and they work.

I also have a small fleet of moveable "mini-hoop" 4'x8' shelters with a pop-door and hatch doors for servicing. To get in, I have to step over a knee wall which is getting to be a bit of an issue as I age, and they're only a smidge over 4' high, so I have to crouch, but I rarely have to do more than put 1 foot in to fill a duckling bathtub or catch someone. I love them because my moms with babies love them and they're easy to move and service. There *is* no bedding because they're on grass.

I think it would (for me) depend on the number of chickens. A raised one, would be lovely, for a small flock in the 6 - 10 bird range. But a medium sized flock - say 12 - 18, would be more difficult to accommodate in a raised one, at least for me - and I keep anywhere from 15 - 28 birds. I also like that in my walk-in coop, there's a separate space for bedding, feed, and tools/ equipment, like shovels, transport & isolation crates, egg baskets, etc.

It really depends for me. If I am going to be moving my coop around (which I would prefer), then I would like it up off the ground to provide shelter and shade. If I was going to have a stationary coop, I would prefer it be on the ground so that the deep bedding could tie into the soil below for additional microbes and bugs.

I think it really depends on the conditions of the area you have, and weather. I live in a very hot dry place, so I want very open. So for me I want to be able to go into the coop, and clean, feed, and just be with my chickens. If I lived in a place that got super cold, I might want an off the ground more enclosed coop to concentrate the warmth. I think you can make either work .

I've been very happy with my raised chicken coop: https://i.imgur.com/mPKpkOQ.jpeg. The worst part, of course, is climbing the stairs every time I want to go in. I've made this worse on myself because I haven't built proper stairs: I made them out of cinder blocks. I finished building it and I was just sick of carpentry work and sick of spending money on lumber. It's also a bit tedious when I'm adding bedding material. When I'm adding wood chips, I dump the material into produce trays and then lift that inside. Another con is that it makes it colder in the winter (Newaygo, MI--zone 5b). Having the coop on the ground would put the chickens closer to the warmer ground and would make for fewer drafts getting in.  
 
For me, though, the benefits outweigh those drawbacks. The chickens love the area underneath for dust baths, for keeping out of the weather, and as another spot to stay safe from flying predators (though knock on wood, after two years I've still had zero problems with this--maybe because of living in the woods but maybe because of how many safe spots I've made for the chickens). The building is also half shed and they are only allowed underneath the chicken coop half (I hope that phrasing is clear), so I also appreciate having all that extra storage space. And I like the hatch I built for unloading dirty bedding. I take that hatch off, move the wheelbarrow in front of it, and can easily rake material into it. I also find it pretty easy to keep winter drafts out: I collect other people's leaf bags in the fall and stack them along three sides of the coop, blocking the wind from easily getting underneath.  
 
Sorry for my kind of run-on writing here. I guess my brain's feeling a bit lazy today. I should've formatted this as a pros and cons list since I just felt like listing all that stuff, but hopefully you can sort through it!