I love the look of the coop and the basic layout and overall am still very happy with it but I'm currently finding it a bit more labour intensive than I perhaps imagined. Partly this is down to my inexperience but also probably because I have more chickens than I originally planned on getting but also with two young children time is at a premium for me.
I've re-read what I've put below and hope that it doesn't sound too negative as I am happy with the coop. As you will see if you visit the GF website the Editor of Practical Poultry Magazine is currently conducting a 12 month comparison with a leading wooden coop. I do not buy this magazine so have no idea how the project is going.
I have had some discussions with the manufacturer over build quality, All the panels are cut from recycled plastic sheets and when mine arrived it had a lot of swarf on some of the cut edges which the instructions told me to file off. For such an expensive piece of kit I wasn't expecting to have to start with remedial works. I discussed this via email with Green Frog and was told that sometimes as the saw blades used to cut the plastic age the cuts become a little more ragged.
The next issue that I contacted them about was that one of the leg supports was bowing. They said they'd had a few problems with this and posted me a bracing piece of plastic which I had to drill and attach with zip ties. This has rectified the problem.
The roosting bars are made of composite and both of mine have cracks at either end that have become a haven for red mite. Apparently these cracks vary per bar and are the result of the manufacturing process. The suggestion was to fill them with some sort of araldite or similar compound. In my case I haven't done this yet as I have packed the end with DE. If I used an epoxy I would need to redrill the pin holes that allow the bars to be attached to the coop as the cracks seem to go quite a way up the middle of the bars.
One side of the nest box does not fit flush against the main body of the coop. I haven't discussed this with GF as I've only really just noticed it. I think the cause is that the roost bar is slightly too short so that when you put it through the body of the coop and insert the fixing pin at either end (outside the coop walls) it is squeezing the coop too much causing a concave shape to the wall adjacent to the nest box. This then leaves a gap of approx 5mm down one side of the nest box. I'm going to feed this back to them.
This is my first venture into chicken keeping and I chose this coop for a number of reasons: Long life span (20 years claimed without needing to repaint etc), extremely easy to clean - take apart and hose down or wipe out. Back comes off easily for removing waste etc and this is all true. When I discovered the red mite it was a relatively simple job to take it apart and hose it down to get rid of them and they have been under control since (roosting bar issue taken into account).
Where I have an issue with the design is that compared to some other coops I have seen which have something like this that Hillfooter recommends:
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=70436.0 or a removable board that slides out for cleaning etc in the GF the poo drops straight onto whatever covering you have on the floor so the chickens walk around and through it all the time unless I poo pick the interior daily. I now have 9 chooks in the coop so if I don't do it every day it builds up quite quickly and the chooks can get pooey feet which worries me. I have been experimenting with different floor coverings to see if can reduce this problem and what is working best for me so far is overlapping sheets of newspaper covered in chopped straw. What does work really well with this design (or would if I had a bit more room at the back of the coop) is that when you remove the back panel you can pull it all straight out into a wheel barrow and if the newspaper is thick enough nothing seeps through onto the floor beneath. Even if it does then it wipes clean in seconds.
A final comment is that the upper side of the roof has a stippled effect. The birds love to sit on this and poo everywhere. Solids are fine for removing but anything remotely liquid becomes very difficult to clean off once dried.
Feel free to post specific questions and I will try to answer them
Ben
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May 06, 2011, 23:19