A step up from painting the floor of your poultry house is covering it with vinyl, marmoleum, or linoleum flooring. These materials are exceptionally durable and will resist standing moisture far longer than even the best exterior paint. I’ve heard from several people who’ve used our chicken coop plans that they’ve added linoleum, marmoleum, or vinyl to the floors and love it.
Here are a few pictures of chicken coops where the floor of the henhouse is lined with a durable flooring material:
Tony J. (Portland, Oregon) lined the floor of his Garden Ark portable chicken coop with vinyl flooring left over from another project.
Bill G. (San Francisco Bay area, California) lined the floors and walls of his Garden Coop with vinyl flooring to make cleaning up after his chickens easy.
The cost factor
As with many of the decisions you’ll make when building your own chicken coop, this one may come down to cost. If you have a scrap roll of flooring material or some vinyl tiles leftover from another project, putting those to use in your chicken coop is a good plan.
But if you have to buy these products new — also factoring in any adhesive you might need — the cost may far exceed the cost of a quart or gallon of paint. And even that may go beyond what’s required to keep your backyard chickens healthy, happy, and laying eggs.
Tips for covering your chicken coop floor with linoleum
- Avoid using the self-stick tiles. They don’t often adhere well to a bare plywood coop floor. And they expand/contract at a different rate than wood, exacerbating the problem of poor adhesion. The roll type (wall-to-wall) flooring is better.
- Look around for remnants or scraps of vinyl or linoleum at flooring stores or “rebuilding” centers. Don’t worry if the pieces you get don’t match. Once you lay bedding down overtop, no one will notice.
- Staple the material down around the edges of your chicken coop floor to keep it from curling up and to prevent bedding from getting caught in the gap at the edge.
- Use moulding or 1×2 lumber to cover the gap at the edges for a more finished look and feel.
- Still plan to cover it with bedding (straw, wood shavings, etc.). Even though a durable floor resists moisture, it does nothing to stop odors or flies. A few inches of carbonaceous bedding will catch the chicken’s poop and start the composting process. It’ll also help keep your chickens from sliding around.
- While our backyard chicken coop plans call for raised henhouses, not all chicken coop designs are the same. If your hen house floor will be subject to both chicken and human foot traffic, durable flooring is an especially smart idea.
Have you lined the floor of the henhouse on your backyard chicken coop? What about other flooring options (tile, metal, marble, gold leaf. . . )? Leave a comment with any tips or suggestions.
I just finished working on an old raised 18×25 coop that I separated in two sections with a wall. The front 300 sq. ft. for farm storage and the back 150 for the chickens where the original chicken doors can be utilized. I had the thought of linoleum flooring thinking it would be far easier to keep clean and much more durable than painting the treated 3/4 inch plywood. I was thrilled to find these postings to learn my idea was already tested and true.
What type of flooring would you say is the most durable since it’s such a small area I would rather front the cost to have the longest lasting flooring.
Thanks:)!
Dana
I don’t know, Dana. Hopefully, other readers will chime in with their experiences. Compared to the best paint, though, all these options will be more durable. But you might ask at your flooring retailer for a comparison among linoleum, marmoleum, and vinyl. It may depend on what other kind of traffic and moisture it will be exposed to beyond just chicken feet.
Hi, all. I am new to the chicken thing, and I am having a good time. I just finished my coop. After installing tile for 27 years it seem fitting to tile my coop, so I tiled the walls and floor. I also installed a floor drain as well as warm floors (in-floor heating) and, yes, epoxy grout. It makes cleaning easy.