Internal Height in Hen House

[Margaid]

OH is indulging his parsimonius streak and thinks I ought to make my new (still to be ordered) hen house dual purpose. This is because he reckons that the hens don't need the 5 -6 feet of headroom. I don't fancy having my feed bins up on a shelf 3 feet off the floor, as it would mean lifting between 10 an 12 Kgs when they're full. Neither do I really want to have to grovel underneath an elevated house to get at them, plus it doesn't allow room for mixing the feed.

Does anyone have a recommendatios for how much height the hens would need - bearing in mind that Welsummers are a reasonable size and I have a cockerel. The timber yard will, within reason, make any modifications I want but they are expensive and I don't want to get it wrong. I need to store the feed and bedding and other stuff - I have lots of large plastic tubs the lime putty (for plastering) came in, but because of the grain diet I need space to mix it under cover.

The two hens and the cockerel are in the Solway house which is about 3' high inside, and the floor area is just under 9 sq feet. When I open it up in the morning it is quite smelly although I haven't detected any ammonia so my gut feeling is they need the "air space". Any help to shoot this idea down in flames would be much appreciated.

 

[Marigold]

Can you post a pic/ plans/measurements of the proposed house, Margaid? With 5-6 feet of headroom it sounds more like a small shed than a usual sort of coop. Is it off the ground? At least now you have your present birds you will have a good Idea how much space they will need, including headroom. I'm sure you're right that more is better, to assist ventilation, but if you divided 5-6 feet in half, would that be enough either for the feed bins or the birds? Also how many birds are you planning to put in it, max?
I would think that of you intend to store several bins of different feed ingredients in order to mix your own, you would need a walk-in shed of some sort, in a convenient place for carrying and unloading sacks of grain, and this might not be in the middle of the field where you are keeping your birds? When I made my quail house I went for the biggest little house that would fit the space available but it's been a real nuisance ever since because its too small to move around in conveniently and so I can't actually use all the space there is in there to the best advantage.

 

[chrismahon]

The problem is essentially that of ventilation Margaid. The vents across the house need to be above the perches with the birds on them. The perches need to be above the nest boxes so the stackup arrives at a height of 1070mm at the apex of a pent roof with an angle of 15 degrees and a perch height of 150 mm. If the perches are lower it gets difficult to poo pick. Big 180mm shutable vent at the front and smaller 90mm vent at the back. Daren't go any lower than that and still not sure it works. If I ever get any time I will post about our breeding coops. The access door is as small as I would go and as big as it can be with those dimensions with 450mm clearance off the ground. Everything is linked so you need to think overall before you decide. There are two users of a coop -the chickens and you. Overlook that and you will curse every morning -you need more space than they do.

I think I have the ultimate 4 bird coop compromise. Workable size, just moveable fully assembled and material efficient to build. Pop-hole big, two nest boxes, easy to assemble, light and airy and very secure. Only time and the comments of the forum will decide.

 

[Icemaiden]

This might be a daft question, but thinking of how hens huddle together for warmth in cold weather, can a coop be too big? 5-6' sounds a lot for 4 hens...

 

[EddieS]

A coop can never be too big, we tend to forget because of recent history, the Summer.
Hens handle cold weather far better than hot. Crowd them into poky coops, get a few days of
80 plus weather and they will suffer. They will go off lay far quicker than in cold weather.

 

[Icemaiden]

Fair point... I haven't had any experience of keeping hens in hot weather yet...

 

[Margaid]

You're question is the one I'm asking Marigold - is it high enough to divide in two?

Their 6' x 4' shed is approx 6' 6" inside with one fixed window and is £75 cheaper than the hen house, but on further examination of the picture in the catalogue - counting the number of boards for example, the hen house is actually probably only about 54" high. Unfortunately they sold their display model of the one I wanted just after I contacted them but before I could get to see it.

I was told they were tall enough to walk around in - but like me, neither the proprietor nor his wife is very tall. They list 5 sizes ranging from 4' x 3' to 12' x 6'. Actually if you look at this

http://www.littleacre-direct.co.uk/acatalog/Brentford_Range.html it is very similar. The front vent is more of a window (unglazed but with weldmesh) the pophole is at the corner next to the main door and they put the nestbox on the wall opposite the door and window - but I can change things around. They reckon 6-8 hens for the 6' x 4' which is the one I was considering, but on the basis of 2 sq ft per hen would it take up to 12?. Their 6' x 4' shed is approx 6' 6" inside with one fixed window and is £75 cheaper than the hen house.

My Solway house, which the 2 hens and cockerel are in at the moment is the older version of this - it had an internal nest box so we removed it and fitted an external Chickbox as far from the pophole as we could go

http://www.solwayrecycling.co.uk/recycled-shop/pig-poultry/hen-houses/standard-eco-hen-house

- it had an internal nest box so we removed it and fitted an external Chickbox as far from the pophole as we could go

When we fitted the Chickbox I actually sat inside on the floor holding a spanner on the nuts used to bolt it in place. It sits on a really heavy wooden frame, on which the curved corrugated steel was delivered, so it makes it a convenient height for me to get head and shoulders inside to poo pick and sweep it out. If they really cuddled up you might get another Welsummer in there.

One idea I had was to follow a suggestion of Lewis Wright and have internal nest boxes under a shelf 18" from the floor with the perch above the shelf. The idea is that the nest box is dark, the shelf is easily cleaned of droppings and the shelf protects the birds from any updraught. The disadvantage is trying to collect eggs when maybe the hens are inside in inclement weather. I think it ought to be possible to do the same thing with shelf and perch, but with external nest boxes. One disadvantage I have just thought of is that if the house floor doesn't get soiled it would be easy to forget to do a complete clean.

This is part of my problem you see - I come up with an idea which looks good, but then I talk myself out of it and become unsure of the best way forward.

I've just looked at the big plastic buckets and weighed one which was a third full - 5Kgs, so I really don't fancy lugging them about much. You're absoloutely right Marigold, I need a walk in shed to store stuff and I would prefer it to be failry near the henhouse - but that's incompatable with not having to lug feed sacks too far.

"Later ...." Just had a further discussion with Mr Grumpy who now maintains he was only trying to help!! Basically he wants the feed out from where it is stored at the moment but there isn't anywhere else under cover as he's bagged all the available outbuildings.

So it seems I'm probably back to my original choice - the local house or the Littleacre. The idea was to find something that was well built and reasonably well laid out and just buy it - not faff about designing or altering something when we haven't got the time ( I might try and post some pics of the building works in the Chatter section so you can see why!!).

To answer one other question - the house is not on legs but I would almost certainly sit it on concrete blocks to keep it off the ground. We're not short of the odd block or two!

Thanks for all your advice; at least drafting the reply has got some things sorted in my head!