chicken coop foundation

Hello permies,

I'm looking to build a 6 foot by 8 foot chicken coop and am considering a few different possibilities for a foundation. Here are a few of the considerations:

Often wet clay rich soil that is known to freeze down to 16 inches
Occasional 60 mph (100kmph) wind gusts, but with large trees in the vicinity
desire to minimize concrete use and digging
hoping for this to possibly last for many decades

Digging a whole foundation like a house might be great for predator protection but seems like overkill. Setting the structure on concrete blocks on the surface seems like it would shift with the frost and possibly blow away. Somewhere between might involve combinations of tying down and replacing some subsoil with gravel under the corners, setting wooden fence posts, or building concrete posts with rebar and cylindrical forms to bolt onto. The last option uses way more concrete (not as much as a house foundation of course) but posts, treated or cedar, seem like they can give out under the wrong conditions and result in needing to lift the coop to repair. Black locust may be a free option but tricky to work with in unmilled form.

Anybody have any ideas I might not have thought of, or reasons any of these options might be better or worse than I think?

My father-in-law built my coop from repurposed pipe.  It sits on the ground with no foundation. I have never had anything dig into the coop.  I recently with a lot of help from my son built an addition on the coop to keep chicks safe until they were big enough to join the older hens.  They would stick there little heads through the chicken wire, so I dug a trench and used old roofing tin on the bottom portion to keep them safe.  I live in California so we don't have the frost like you.  We have very high winds certain times a year. I think the combination of heavy pipe, strong tin, and chicken wire has made it so it never moved an inch.  I just put wood chips  on the floor, and I'm good. I use to buy the wood chips, but now I get them free. I still buy cedar once in awhile to add to keep the fleas and other pests down. I have read cedar causes respiratory problems for chickens, but I have never had an issue in the 15 years we have had chicken.  This may be because of how open my coop is.  I don't know if this is any help to you.  I don't think I would want to make a cement foundation. It seems like it would be hard to clean.  Chickens are such messy critters.   Good luck to you.

It depends on your predators I would not have any night time coop without a concrete or metal base we've had to many things dig under to get at the chickens.  We're building a new coop at our new place, it's inside the barn so on a concrete floor but I'm still using blocks for the first half of the wall so there's no wood at the base to either rot out with contact with chicken litter or be gnawed through by critters wanting to eat chicken or chicken feed.

I've been going back and forth, back and forth about this very thing right now.  Materials are expensive right now, so that is part of what is driving my decision.

I've decided I'm going with 4x4 posts set into the ground.  We have deep frost here so I'm going to set mine in 4'.  I will probably use 6' pieces so I get a couple feet above the ground in the lowest spots.  The coop I am building is 8'x16', so I'm putting 4 posts per side, with a little less than 16' 4x4 runners down each side.  I'm making the runners a little short so that the coop extends over those for a few inches on either end.  Then I am building a "traditional" floor on those two 16' rails and attaching it to the runners.  The floor is built from 8' 2x6s attached to two 2x6x16' boards.  I'll attach a couple pictures that may make that description a little more clear.

Directions came from Lowe's site.  Install a shed foundation

Thanks for the pics and perpsectives ya'll! I do think I am going to set posts and build a wooden floor structure a couple feet off the ground. Sounds like it's good for ventilation and adds some extra habitat for the chickens, unlike if it were a couple inches off the ground which would be habitat for rats. I do think I'm a little more worried about the blowing away since the coop will only be ventilated at the very top. Does anyone have any experience with a tall, mostly enclosed coop with the wind?

I'm also trying to figure out how to make the floor. It seems like any sort of wood, plywood or planks, could rot in contact with bedding using the deep litter method, but linoleum seems really gross. It almost makes me wanna find some cheap tile that someone's giving away, but that's a lot of work. I've heard If the moisture stays low enough and you start with enough bedding this might not be a problem, but I wonder if this person isn't using the deep litter method. Does anyone have any experience with this? We plan to whitewash the walls. Perhaps whitewash could slow the decay of the floor as well?

If your worried about it blowing over and the floor rotting how about looking in the local adds for someone giving away paving slabs, there's always people here wanting them off their hands. that would make a heavy and rot proof floor if you treated them like tiles and sealed the cracks

Dietrick Klooster wrote:

I'm also trying to figure out how to make the floor. It seems like any sort of wood, plywood or planks, could rot in contact with bedding using the deep litter method, but linoleum seems really gross.  

I have wood on the bottom of our brooder floor, so I just used a piece of EDPM rubber pond liner (the tough rubbery stuff - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPDM_rubber ) that covers the floor and goes up the wall about a foot before being fastened on with clips. I find I need to protect the lower wall as well as the floor. Some plastics absorb smells and also get brittle.

I have moved my hens three times in search of the perfect place for them on my tiny half acre.  It all started with a crappy plastic shed that was on my place when I moved here.  The plastic walls could not support a rake, but I improvised and made it cool for 2 years. It was cold and small.  I will post photos.  However, mice ate through the plastic floor and were followed by snakes, of course, which weakened the entire floor and ticked me off.  I covered the floor in plywood which was eaten through also.  So I moved the hens to a modified lean-to wood shed for more space, wooden walls and the possibility of warmer winters.  The mice took over again.  Since I am in the oil and gas business, I finally traded labor for a used well building which had no floor but foam-insulated steel frame and metal siding.  Like you, I knew I had to choose the correct foundation for this 10x12 structure. I built a floor on concrete deck blocks and 4x4s, up off the ground just high enough that the hens can hang out under the building, and it is not easy to gain access to the floor for mice and snakes. Since wood is so expensive I used pallets between the main joists. Then, I put that sharp construction metal sheeting on the joists and framing before overlaying it with plywood for the floor, so eating through the plywood would be virtually impossible.  So far so good.  The hens love to be under the building and being up off the ground keeps snow and moisture out.  I use a deep litter approach in the building using "Flock Fresh" bedding so the plywood is dry under the 8 inches of bedding.  In winter I use a metal pan with a floating tank heater for their water which I raised up on 3 layers of bricks that seem to gather the warmth of the water and radiate it back out too.  I only had to use heat lamps for 2 weeks this past winter which is a nice change.  

I had trouble getting the last photo to show up so it says to download.  If you haven't seen it, I put the little coop that I use for chicks inside the big building to get them used to each other, but have now stored that and the space is large with things to climb on when I lock them up due to weather or predator concerns.  Since chickens don't pee like other animals, the moisture is all in their poop so I do have a "sh** shelf" that gathers a lot while they roost.  I also have recently enclosed their laying boxes since they like it that way and keeps the poop off their heads if laying while another is roosting above. I had to cover the exposed insulation with remnant plywood and tin since they found it necessary to peck it to pieces.  This year I will paint the building and next year I hope to side it with whatever I choose for my house.  I was hoping for T-111 but the price went up around here so tin it is.  I also like the raised foundation to keep snow out.  We received a lot this year!  Good luck!  

Remelle Burton wrote:Then, I put that sharp construction metal sheeting on the joists  

Anyone know what that stuff is called?  That looks like the perfect solution for under my floor.  I was going to use hardware cloth, but this looks better.

Trace Oswald wrote:

Remelle Burton wrote:Then, I put that sharp construction metal sheeting on the joists  

Anyone know what that stuff is called?  That looks like the perfect solution for under my floor.  I was going to use hardware cloth, but this looks better.

I was able to find something similar looking by searching "metal lath", but it came up as galvanized steel stucco netting. I think this is the same stuff?
galvanized steel stucco netting

Heather Sharpe wrote:

Trace Oswald wrote:

Remelle Burton wrote:Then, I put that sharp construction metal sheeting on the joists  

Anyone know what that stuff is called?  That looks like the perfect solution for under my floor.  I was going to use hardware cloth, but this looks better.

I was able to find something similar looking by searching "metal lath", but it came up as galvanized steel stucco netting. I think this is the same stuff?
galvanized steel stucco netting

That looks perfect for my floor, thank you.

It is construction metal lath. At home depot it is item number 4113145. 27x96 metal lath galvanized. $10.35 per sheet.