chicken coop floors

[dirty]

i'm considering building a chicken coop this spring.

the dreamer in me wants to build a combo greenhouse/chicken coop. it would be easier to pour one concrete slab then build it on that.

the practical part of me thinks i should just build coop either with a dirt floor or elevated with a wood floor. and be done with it. cheap and quick.

if i thought i was going to live here for a long time (7yrs+) i'd pour concrete.

what should i do? what would you do? what kind of floor does your chicken coop have?

[Deleted]

Well... dirt floors, harder to clean though. Wood isn't that much easier to clean than dirt... cement is expensive. (I'm helping a lot aint I?) For predator reasons up there, I wouldn't reccomend a dirt floor. Which narrows it to cement or wood. Cement's expensive... I'll vote for wood floor. See how easy that was??

Kaza

[Kathy]

I'm going to vote for cement since I had the joy of a weasel getting in when I had wood floors-who knew they could morph into such tiny little chicken killers?

Even if you don't decide to stay at that location for years, having a solid floor under a coop/garden shed as well as under the green house would add value to your sale price wouldn't it?

If you make it for dual use(chicken coop/potting shed), you're only increasing your values plus cement overall will hold up for a much longer time.

As you may have figured out, I'm not a fan of dirt floors due to predators, difficulty cleaning and problems with lice/parasites on your birds.

[bbird]

We had dirt floors in ours. We laid wovenwire down and used it as predator guard, then put dirt down. The holes were about 2-3 inches on the wire, so I don't know if a weasel could still get through. We don't have weasels, but used it to keep the yotes out.

Concrete would be ideal, you could keep it clean and sanitary easily. With dirt I always worried about having a sickness with the chickens (we had 200-300 chickens at a time) but knock on wood, we didn't have any problems but I always felt like I was just waiting for a problem to pop up.

[dirty]

i've been giving this way to much thought. i'm still not 100% sure where to put the coop.

i have decided i will try for concrete. if the timing(spring thaw, chicks needing a home) works out. if the timing doesn't work out, i'll build it with a wood floor.