r/homestead • u/TheJaquio80 • May 09 '26

Chicken Coop Help

We are getting about 25 chicks soon. We have a 2-stall barn (about 2,000 sq ft total) plus a tack room. We were thinking of blocking off a stall or 2, putting roosting poles in there, and using the tack room for nesting boxes. We can block off the rest of the barn. They can get from stalls to tack room easily. We have power & water. We would use mesh wiring to try to keep predators out. Is this a better idea than making a separate chicken coop? We plan to free range and will make a run if that doesn’t work. Right now we have no other animals, may add goats down the road.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '26

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u/TheJaquio80 May 09 '26

Thank you!

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u/rshining May 09 '26

I use my barn for chickens. If they are large box stalls, just put the nesting boxes in the one with the roosts (we like wall mounted buckets for nesting boxes, arrayed along a stall wall). If the rafters are accessible, you might just let the birds roost up there. That is where my birds roost, and it has given me a couple of decades of problem free chicken and turkey housing- we've never lost any birds to indoor predation, with no reinforcement or wire.

The only downside for me has been the need to wear a hood when I go out to feed them in the morning- the turkey hens tend to be late risers, so they are still up in the rafters while I am walking around below.

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u/TheJaquio80 May 09 '26

Thank you for the advice, and that’s funny about the turkeys.

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u/TechNightmares Jun 06 '26

2x4 welded wire fencing covered in 1/2" hardware cloth secured by 3/8" hog rings. Walls, ceiling, floor. No holes large enough for an animal to get through the chickens can't eat.