Keeping hens and ducks chat.

edwink

Glittering_M said:Without the pull out trays I'm guessing you'd just have to pull everything out to clean? 

To be honest there isn't normally much to take out of a house anyway to clean except their perches.  You would still need to remove the perches in a plastic coop as they would need cleaning because chickens do most of their droppings during the night so their perches can get a little messy if the girls are not overhanging the perches properly, their bottoms I mean. We scrape our perches every morning after they have all come out but it is easy for us as our girls have a 6ft x 4ft house that was originally a shed. So we just step inside and lightly scrape the perches and once a week remove them all and take them outside to give them a wash and put them back to dry for the day. The majority of houses will have removable perches so on a weekly clean these can be removed, cleaned, and put back. 

For the houses that do not have a removable dropping tray, you will definitely need to make sure you have enough room to get in there to be able to scrape and clean the floor and the perches properly. Obviously, you would want the easiest way to clean them out and not have to struggle every week to do it so maybe bear this in mind when you do finally choose one. Probably best if you have some spare time to pop along to somewhere near you so you can actually have a close look at some plastic coops to give you a good idea of the space you do actually need. You only have to open a few of the chicken house doors to see for yourself how easy or difficult cleaning will be.

Hope that helps

Edwink x

Glittering_M

Thanks that is very helpful. There is a place not too far from me that have the Arkus but I'm not sure where I'd try anything else. I'll do some searching.

To clarify, should there be bedding etc under the perches or does bedding just go in the nesting box?

Glittering_M

Also stupid question but if the fence for the run is wooden, could red mite get into it?

edwink

Glittering_M said:Thanks that is very helpful. There is a place not too far from me that have the Arkus but I'm not sure where I'd try anything else. I'll do some searching.

To clarify, should there be bedding etc under the perches or does bedding just go in the nesting box?

We use straw shavings for our girls (Dengie bedding) and we put the shavings in their nesting boxes and then when we clean them out we clean inside their chicken house first by taking the perches out and clearing and cleaning the floor under where the perches sit. Then we clean out their nesting boxes by picking out any wet bedding and picking all the droppings if any are in there, there are always some but not many. Then the bedding that is in nesting boxes gets reused by covering the floor inside their house and the nesting boxes get new shavings.  That way we find it is more economical as it has two lots of use if that makes sense. We find it easier to keep the floor of their house cleaner by having the shavings under their perches otherwise the droppings would just land on the floor.  We have lino on their floor which is much easier to keep clean than wood is and we can mop the floor over with disinfectant in water when it needs a wash. Some people use newspaper under the perches to catch the droppings and we tried that but it didn't work for us as we found it always tore as it doe get slightly wet from the droppings.

With regards to your question about red mites. ... What normally happens with red mites is they come out at night to feed on the girls blood and one of the best places for them is to be is under the girls perches so they are close to them. So when the girls are sleeping the red mite come out in force and crawl over the girls and feeds off them. This is why plastic coops have become popular, I think. But if the coop is wooden you can use Diatomaceous Earth that Cheery mentioned in her last post. We use it too to protect our girls. Once it is puffed about the house it coats the mite in a very fine powder or they walk through it on their travels around the coop and basically, it suffocates them. Well, that's the idea behind it.

Please do not worry because no question is stupid when it comes to keeping hens, honest. 

Edwink x 

Glittering_M

Thanks, I really appreciate the time you have taken to answer! 

Cheery_Daff

Ours is a relatively small house, not a shed type one, so our set up is different to edwink's. Our hen house just has one perch, and a little divider thing that makes two nest boxes. We cover the whole of the floor with bedding - used the same chopped straw as Edwink for years but recently been experimenting with dust extracted wood shavings which are much cheaper locally, and they've been fine. I am VERY liberal with the use of diatomaceous earth,  a good handful every time I change bedding at least, I order 10kg at a time from ebay 😮

Ours sleep some on the perch, some in the nest box. Changes each night - we refer to shutting them in as 'checking on the chicken bus' because our first lot used to sleep two on the perch, two in the nest box, all facing the front and looking like they were travelling on a little bus 😂😂 last night Bessie and Budgie were in the nest box, Bonnie and Sunshine on the perch, and Poppy behind the nest box. Bessie is oldest and always goes in first, so always gets the pick ofher favourite spot 😂

Ours has two doors that open (the front is the front off an old rabbit hutch). One left open all day, the other one opened to collect eggs and clean. I confess im not sure I can get the perch out! I do wipe the, and sprinkle diatomaceous earth on it, but it never seems dirty. The nest box divider is another matter - for some reason the drive perching on that, no idea why as it looks really uncomfortable!

I'll see if I can find a picture...

Cheery_Daff

Here you are, this is Bessie on the right, and dear departed Rusty on the left, neither had laid an egg for years at that point, just messing about while I was trying to clean the house out 😂

Perspective is a bit wrong, both doors are roughly the same size, and it's at least as deep as two nest boxes, if not deeper. 

Glittering_M

Thanks for sharing @Cheery_Daff , lovely to see the photo. I can see what you mean about the bus! 

Every time I see a new coop, I keep flitting between a plastic coop or buying or making a wooden one. I guess I'm not sure I'd trust my DIY skills when there are lives at stake. I'm a very indecisive person lol. 

Cheery_Daff

We made a fatal (literally) error at the start - left inch high ventilation stripe between wall and roof. A stoat got in through one and killed 2 of our hens, and severely traumatised the other two 😕 We removed them, drilled ventilation holes with a large drill bit instead and covered them with metal mesh, and also covered the entire run with quarter inch mesh, which is so small a bee can't get through it.

You learn as you go! I quite understand wanting to buy one at first. We just didn't have much money left from moving house, and used what we did have to buy wood and mesh for a big run.

edwink

Fab picture Cheery.  I think you have done a wonderful job and it definitely looks super comfy for them, spacious, and very easy to keep clean too.  I really wish we would have done something similar when we first got set up here all those years ago because our first homemade one was useless.

Our first homemade coop was a nightmare as we just put on one side door about 2ft x 3ft and a much smaller door at the front for the hens entrance with a little lift-down ramp for them to use. I'm sure you have guessed by now that we had to go in on our hands and knees and had no option but to clean it out positioned like that. It was the most annoying setup ever as we knelt in poop, got covered in straw and Diatomaceous earth powder, not to mention coming out with the odd cobweb stuck in my long hair.  It was awful but we persevered with it as we used all recycled wood to make it and were chuffed with our efforts.  Little did we know it would be horrendous trying to get in there to clean. Several years later as our number of hens went down we got some more hens and little did we know at the time we brought red mite into our original flock and that was equally horrendous. We had such a job getting rid of the mite so in the end, taking everything into consideration with persistent red mite and a very awkward to clean house, etc. we decided to get rid of it.  We were very fortunate that we had a standby for them which was a 6ft x 4ft shed which a local gardener offered us some months before. We had always planned to change the coop for the 2nd hand shed at some stage but the dreaded red mite prompted us to swap them over sooner. The red mites normally feed on the hens overnight so we got the girls out first thing in the morning and puffed them all over with loads of Diatomaceous earth, got the old coop out of their run, puffed the earth anywhere and everywhere we could think of around the run and got the 2nd hand shed set up in a day with perches and nesting boxes. Obviously, we treated the shed too to make sure in case any of the mites remained on the girls before they slept in their new house.  We had to burn the old house we made to make sure it didn't get into any other wood around the place. Bit of a nightmare but we just got on with it and decided it was just one of those things which can and does happen with keeping hens, unfortunately. 

We loved the new setup once it was all done as it gave the girls more room in their run because the shed was so big we attached it to the outside of their run. We covered the whole shed with the roof as well in chicken wire first to make sure the girls would be safe especially at night. We also attached their nesting boxes to the outside of the house and covered that in chicken wire also. Was a very long day getting it all done and set up but it was well worth it. The hens were ok being treated with the powder as they were used to being handled but we took drastic action with the mite before they started to affect our girls health. Blooming mites are truly a pest. 

Edwink x