Yes, you can put a chicken coop on concrete. There are many different ways that chicken coops can be set up, and you want to consider what would be the best options for you.
Concrete isn’t as popular as wood, but it can be an effective way to clean and care for your coop without too much work.
Read on to find out the good and bad about using concrete, and our helpful tips to make it work!
Pros of using concrete for chicken coop
There are several good reasons to want to use concrete as the flooring for your coop. It’s a sturdy type of flooring and provides extra security for your flock.
Using concrete can also allow you to put your coop on the ground without resorting to stilts to keep animals from coming in or worrying about putting down hardware cloth.
Pro 1: Easy to clean
Chickens are notoriously messy animals. They poop everywhere, leave feathers and dust all over the coop, and run.
Concrete is easy to clean and sanitize option when it comes to using it as the flooring for your coop. You can easily scrape up droppings and remove them and use a broom to remove the old bedding.
Using concrete also allows for easy drainage, as you don’t have to worry about it soaking up water when deep cleaning, and it can be pushed out easily to allow the coop floor to dry.
This method will also make it easier to maintain health in your chickens, as they won’t have foot-related illnesses such as bumble foot or respiratory issues from the build-up of ammonia from droppings.
Pro 2: Protects against predators
You want the run to be in the best shape possible to protect your chickens.
Having concrete as the flooring will help protect against raccoons, possums, foxes, or other nocturnal critters that may see them as a tasty snack.
However, you want to be cautious about any holes or gaps between the siding of the coop and the floor. You will need to invest in sideboards or paneling to cover the gaps.
Pro 3: Prevents burrowing animals
Animals like moles, rats, or foxes like to burrow. Using concrete flooring prevents these animals from digging their way through the bottom of the coop.
The animals won’t be able to dig or bite through the solid flooring, and this also keeps you from having to obtain hardware cloth to put around the coop. The concrete will be an effective enough deterrent.
Pro 4: Doesn’t require much maintenance
Once the concrete is put down, it will be there for a long time if maintained. It doesn’t rot like lumber nor easily break down.
You will need to keep an eye on it for crumbling or breaks in the slab and fix it as soon as it is noticed.
Other considerations when choosing concrete
There are always pros and cons to choosing what you want to use as building materials for your coop.
Several things should be considered, from how large you want the coop to be to whether you want to put it on stilts or not.
Whether you want to move the coop later should also be considered, and you need to find out what temperatures the summers and winters usually are.
Con 1: Chickens can’t forage on concrete
Chickens are foraging animals, loving to peck around the ground for bugs and seeds. Concrete does not offer the same benefits as wood or a ground-based coop would, with insects naturally found in the grain or dirt.
It does an excellent job of preventing animals from coming in, but at the same time prevents the chickens from foraging as they would naturally on different flooring.
Con 2: Colder during winter
Concrete is good at staying cool and would provide a nice cold place to lay during the summer when it’s too hot for the chickens to wonder about.
Unfortunately, that also means that it will keep retaining cold within the coop during the winter. Your chickens need a warm, dry place to stay during the winter to keep them from freezing and piling onto each other.
Chickens love to cuddle but being too cold will lead to them not maintaining the proper body heat and cause potential illnesses among the flock.
Con 3: The coop will be immobile
Some people want a permanent structure for their chickens, and concrete is a great way to set up a strong, long-lasting coop.
However, this will mean that you cannot move the coop in the future, and sometimes that is necessary to provide the animals with more suitable grass to forage in.
The grass inside the run will eventually die due to the chickens pecking and scratching in search of tasty snacks.
The movable coop will allow for the grass and flowers in the area to grow back and maintain different sections of the yard.
However, concrete offers stability to the coop and run, allowing many years of safety for the animals inside.
Con 4: Possible injuries to the chickens
A downfall to using concrete is the possibility of injury to your chickens. Without a good layer of bedding, they can break or severely injure their legs or feet from jumping off the roosts onto the floor.
You will want to ensure that you have enough bedding on the floor to prevent injuries.
How to keep chickens on concrete? (3 tips)
Tip 1: Install the concrete floor correctly
Concrete is a slightly more expensive option when it comes to flooring for the coop. You will want to ensure that the slab is installed correctly and in the area you want it to be.
This way, you won’t have to deal with a breakdown from improper installation. You will want to ensure it is level or tilted slightly from the front to make cleaning up easier on yourself.
Tip 2: Keep it clean
Keeping a chicken coop clean and smelling good is a big deal. A concrete floor allows easy cleaning since you can use a broom to sweep out the dirty litter and a hose to rinse the chicken poop.
The concrete needs to be allowed to air out and dry before the fresh litter is put into the flooring, but it shouldn’t take long to finish cleaning up.
A mild soap can also be used to clean the flooring to rid the coop of any bad odors.
This can be scrubbed into the flooring using a push broom or mop and must be rinsed thoroughly and dried before putting down bedding or allowing the chickens back into the coop.
Tip 3: Provide warm bedding
The chickens need a good amount of bedding to stay warm during the colder months.
Using the deep litter method with a concrete floor is a great way to ensure your animals stay warm.
This allows you to have six inches of bedding between them and the cold flooring and will provide a great addition to a compost pile or garden when spring rolls around.
The deep litter method is a way to provide extra warmth to the coop during the cold months.
This is done by allowing the chickens to scratch and turn over the bedding to keep ammonia or poo from building up in one area, and you will add layers to the bedding until it is around six inches.
Then, you will periodically change the older litter out for fresh litter until spring, when you clean the coop thoroughly.
Other options
There are several different options you can choose from when selecting a coop floor. You might be surprised that there are even mats made specifically for chickens! Here are a few options.
Wood
Wood is the most popular option when it comes to coop flooring. It is inexpensive and easy to clean up. However, it doesn’t offer the same ease of cleaning as concrete.
Rubber chicken mats
These mats are made for chickens to use as flooring! They are easy to remove and clean and will minimize any potential injuries to the chickens while in the coop.
They just have to be hosed down to remove any debris and allow chicken keepers to use less bedding than other flooring options.
Wire
Wire floors allow poop to fall through onto the ground, which minimizes clean-up inside the coop. However, there are chances for chickens to get caught on the wires and hurt themselves.
Cleaning up between the wire edges can also be difficult, where stray debris may get caught.
Conclusion
Concrete is one of the best types of flooring you can use for your coop. It is easy to clean up and maintain.
It keeps your chickens cool during the hot summer months, and if you use plenty of bedding, it offers good protection and warmth to the animals during the winter.