Feedback on hoop coop design, please

[EmmaDonovan]

I was inspired by Gallo Del Cielo's hoop coop and some videos by this couple. Please excuse my crappy Sketchup skills.

The basic construction is 1/4" hardware cloth and heavy duty tarp strapped down over cattle panels. The design is for 8-10 laying hens with 12.8 sq. ft. of ground surface area per hen (probably 4 EEs, 4 leghorns, and 2 buff orps). They cannot free-range due to the many hawks we have here. We also have coyotes, raccoons, skunks, bobcats, rattlesnakes, feral cats, and pack rats. The reason for hardware cloth going down 1 foot below the coop is because our yard is plagued with burrowing ground squirrels. Town code requires chicken coops to be predator proof. Basically the entire thing is a fully enclosed 1/4" hardware cloth cage. A wireless cam will help us keep an eye on the coop while we're inside our home. We live in the southern Arizona desert: very dry, hot, and barren.

I don't expect the inside of the coop to get soaked when it rains, which it rarely does, but we can get some serious summer monsoon downpours. The concrete block caps on the ground are there to keep the wood out of water and mud as much as possible if water gets in. We'll use pressure-treated wood anywhere it touches the ground. The plywood panels on either side of the 6' roosts should block water and wind.

 

[aart]

Not a bad model.....but needs dimensions.

What are the foot print dimensions?
8' tall would mean pretty narrow for livestock panels.
IIRC 6' tall for 8' wide.

What are the dimensions of the roost assembly?

Nest perch should be at bottom of nests and about 8" out.

Hopefully your hoop coop will be in the shade.

 

[EmmaDonovan]

The base is 16 ft long by 8 ft wide, according to my housemate who did the math. She just stood here and explained it all to me but heck if I can write all that down, lol. I believe her but if we begin assembling it and it turns out the base needs to be narrower, we could make it longer, e.g., 20 ft x 6 ft.

Roost area is 3.5' wide (north to south), 4' tall and 6' long (east to west).

There is no shade, thus the tarps. We can provide additional shade in the form of drop-downs and sails during the summer.

 

[aart]

8' wide will give you 5'-6" tall with a 16' panel.
I cadded it up and confirmed with an actual panel before I built my first hoop.
Not sure if you can measure curve length in Sketchup,
but you can in ACAD.

 

[EmmaDonovan]

What shape is that? A semi-circle or some other shape?

 

[aart]

What shape is that? A semi-circle or some other shape?

Yes. I wanted the head room.
Did your friend use catenary...more of an egg shape?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

^^^^


I took a look at doing a cattle panel hoop coop at one point, with an 8' width (cause its damned convenient). The roof isn't very tall.

If a panel is 16' long, two of them would be 32' . Formula for circumference of a circle is 2 Pi r, so essentially, r = cattle panel length/Pi = 5.09' as a perfect circle made of two panels. Squeezing the sides from 10.2' across to 8' across helps increase the height some. I could show the math, but its almost exactly 6' at the top of the arch with an 8' width in the narrow dimension. I verified with a handy internet calculator, but you can brute force it in your skull.

Makes for a useable, but short, door.

My next thought was to put a cattle panel on each side horizontally in a wooden frame, then "hoop" the cattle panel roof to the desired roof height by adjusting the width. That gets your center roof height to a theoretical 10' height, less whatever overlap you allow on the panels (and you should allow some, for strength, since the whole system exists in either compression (the panels, forcing them into an arc) or tension (the wood frame, keeping the panels from flattening out). of course, i'd go to 10' width, and a 9' (theoretical) roof line, because a circle is stronger than an oval - but you will need to do something to keep the unsupported upper edge of the wood framing from bowing apart in the middle of the run

that's where i stopped thinking about it, because the math gets more complex than i can do in my head

 

[3KillerBs]

In re: getting a more comfortable height for a taller person,

Does anyone have experience with putting the cattle panel on top of a short wall?

P.S. I'm short myself, but my main chicken helper is my almost 6-foot 15yo.

 

[aart]

some videos by this couple.

I see they only went 7' wide.

Might find some tips here too:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/aarts-hoop-coop-chicken-tractor.72211/

 

[aart]

In re: getting a more comfortable height for a taller person,

Does anyone have experience with putting the cattle panel on top of a short wall?

P.S. I'm short myself, but my main chicken helper is my almost 6-foot 15yo.

I helped someone design a guinea hoop.... way tall!
Had Tpost on the sides...can't find the thread link tho, will look more later.
Found thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/modified-hoop-coop-design-development.1120946/
Here's the drawing tho.