Housing

[Anonymous]

I am interested in keeping chickens. I would like to start with 4 hens however I am undecided about the best housing.

Has everyone got chicken specific coops and runs or have any members converted garden sheds etc to house chickens? What would be best??

Thank you in advance for your replies.

Donna. x

 

[Anonymous]

I personally bought ready made chicken coops.I would love to convert my garden shed into a hen house,but,it does store gardening equipment that I couldn't keep elsewhere.
I think the biggest problem with ready made houses is the runs that come with them.They are usually too small,also,I think some will say 6-8 hens,when they would be a squeeze for 4 bantams.

It will depend on what you can afford,as the prices vary tremendously.If you do decide to buy a ready made house,and,your garden is secure.I would suggest buying a house with out a run,putting a temporary fence around.There is orange netting fencing that you can buy from buiders merchants and the stakes/poles to hold it secure are £5-£7 from B&Q.Have your temporary fence up until your hens know the house is their home and security and then remove it so they can free range.
With winter coming though,this might not be suitable.

 

[snifter]

I think the down side with a shed is the size. For 4 hens it would be way to big and would be a lot of work to clean out for only 4 hens. Also things like treating it for mites would be an epic mission.

I personally always go for proper poultry designed houses as they have ventilation, perches and are plenty big enough for roosting etc. Also you can then move them round with the pen to rotate the ground for the chooks. Having a shed would mean you could not move it.

I have had custom made houses with built on runs and then simply put that inside the actual chicken 'run' so to speak. That way if I needed to go out for a bit and wanted to make sure they were safely away I could pop them back into the wooden/mesh run while out. But they usually had a much larger area for most of the day.

Including some pics for you to see what I mean. I realise I was lucky enough to have a 2 acre orchard with this set up but it can be done on a smaller scale.

 

[Lucylou]

Snifter me & my chooks are very jealous!!
I have a converted small shed, the size sold for storing lawn mowers etc raised up on legs. We only used this because we had it already & it had never been used. It has now got an 'extension' on the back to double the size. The downside to this is that I now believe that it might be a problem to keep mite free. Had I had more info when I started last July, I probably wouldn't have gone down this route but then I hahdn't found this great site then

 

[Tim]

Here's one of mine that I bought from Flyte so Fancy that I've had for a good few years now - It's easy to take apart and clean and made with good thick timber - no felt for mites to get under and looks the business!

I also like gd timber designs houses - they look pretty high quality. With wood, you really do get what you pay for. The head teacher at my daughters school bought a house from ebay and it looked big in the photos but it is in fact very flimsey and my guess is the fox could tear it apart easily. It was half of the price of my Flyte So Fancy house - but will certainly not last.

There's an article here that Anne from Flyte so Fancy wrote on Choosing a Chicken House that might be of interest to you too.

Tim

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for your replies. After looking at the links I have spotted something along the lines I was wanting for a run. I'd want something tall enough so that I could stand in it with a wire base so that naughty foxes etc couldn't burrow underneath.

I work mornings (6am-1:30pm) so I'd need a run secure enough that I could let the chickens out before leaving for work approx 5:45am, knowing that they could safely potter around the run until I come in from work when they can have supervised free-range forraging.

Does 4 hens sound like an acceptable number to have?

I'm so sad, I already have names chosen (for WHEN my darling hubby agrees - I normally manage to talk him round!) The names are Henrietta (for obvious reasons!), Florence, Mabel and Gertrude. I've gotta say at this point that these names are so "normal" for me... my dogs are called Preston and Scrabble and my cats are called Dinsdale and Suki (along with my dearly departed cats Magnum, Fenchurch, Kilbane and Lina).

Thank you for making me feel so welcome. xxx

 

[Tim]

4 sounds like a good number for your space to get you started...

The names sound good too

That's perfect - if you work mornings, the chooks can be out in the afternoon which they will really appreciate.

You can of course hang lots of interesting things in their run - like cabbages, sweetcorn and they will love pecking at it and be totally entertained for the morning!

Good luck and do let us know how you get on.

Tim