Chicken Coops & Cages

[tonyman]

http://www.coopsandcages.com.au/chickens/walk-in-chicken-coop-with-nest-box-extra-large/

 

As advertised on this site ,the above link ......has anyone tried the product ? Ive just been on the site and they look good ,sturdy and cheap as.........has anyone erected them and if so how long and easy are they to erect ....

 

im now getting sick of cleaning the garden up, they are making a mess of the lawn and if I put them away they make so much moaning noise , ive given them too much free range although the eggs are fantastic ......but this product maybe the answer for me ..........:yes:

[Guest The Pom Queen]

Hey thats a real good price Nick.

We got fed up of them digging up the garden and couldn't let them up in the rainforest as it would have been impossible to fence so we split half of our garden. The problem for us was that Monty Python always got there before dusk for his dinner :cry: so we now have a huge pen but no chickens

[tonyman]

I thought so too........just going to find a neat spot in the garden now , too much chicken poo around , cant stop the children from playing ,they come first and now after the wet stuff, rain I think its called, it has made the chickens dig the grass up in certain areas ......you will be renewing your chooks wont you ? cant beat fresh eggs ,well you can if you have them scrambled I suppose .......:wacko:

[blossom]

Walk in?? It's less than a meter high!!

Here's a pic of mine. Cost a fair bit more than that. Seemed good quality to start with, but falling to bits pretty quickly. Partly because I thought it was a good idea to move it every now and again. It does NOT like being moved.

I'd go for one of the metal type ones you get at bunnings etc next time I reckon.

Even with the one I have I leave the door open all the time (I have been very lucky fox wise) and they have a section of the garden to themselves to destroy. Luckily I have a good landlord.

It doesn't seem to be uploading, I'll try again.

[Eng32]

Ooohhh I love this thread. I have always wanted to keep chicken but have not been able to up to now. We are looking to buy our first Oz house in the next year, hopefully at least an acre if we can. First on the list once we move in is chickens and this coop is perfect. I would be so upset to wake one morning to find some thing ate them and this seems to keep them safe out of harms way while giving them space. :cute: Thanks for this great info!

[Guest]

That looks cheap for a reason to me.

 

Honestly, I don't touch those sort of flat pack easy to assemble type things for my chooks. I buy proper well built all wood in good quality timber and its still going strong 10 years later sort of thing. Can creosote to kill off red mite and anything else and power wash when needed. And not a bit of asphalt in sight. What it cost me to begin with was a couple of hundred pound more than the cheap kits and its lasted far better.

 

Usually the wood on those flat packed is of poor quality or thin and within a year or so is falling apart. Also it has the felt roof which means mites can inhabit easily but its hell for you to get rid of them as you've no way of getting in the cracks of the wood under the roofing material.

 

I'd pass on it unless you want to be spending that again in a year or so.

 

If you are handy with DIY I'd look to making your own run to go round a decent hen house and make one that you can stand up in. I'd use weld mesh, not chicken wire and I'd make it moveable so you can move the chooks to fresh ground every 6 months or so as they can't stay on the same ground long term and need fresh.

 

Or I'd buy electric netting and clip a wing on each of them and put them behind that. Easy to move round as you want also. I favour long strips down the side or at the back of a garden if its possible and then rotating them over a 3-4 strip patch over the months. Just move the hen house along with it.

[Guest]

Walk in?? It's less than a meter high!!

Here's a pic of mine. Cost a fair bit more than that. Seemed good quality to start with, but falling to bits pretty quickly. Partly because I thought it was a good idea to move it every now and again. It does NOT like being moved.

I'd go for one of the metal type ones you get at bunnings etc next time I reckon.

Even with the one I have I leave the door open all the time (I have been very lucky fox wise) and they have a section of the garden to themselves to destroy. Luckily I have a good landlord.

It doesn't seem to be uploading, I'll try again.

 

Hen houses and coops like that need to be able to be moved to rest the ground else the chooks can get ill and the soil will become a mess (ick). It needs resting at least every 6 months so an alternate piece of ground is needed.

 

Decent well built hen houses are fine to move. I had one custom made with slide out handles each end so it could be picked up and moved between 2 people. And even one person could lift one end to turn it round and face the other way.

 

Proper well made hen houses are the best thing IMHO. A run to go round them is usually easily solved with netting or a portable frame that can be folded and moved round.

[blossom]

Yep, that one will literally fall to bits if we try to move it again. Mine have a pretty big bit of the garden to roam in (I would have felt very bad keeping five shut up in that small area) and on weekends I open their gate and they get the whole garden. :-)

I haven't seen any decent quality wooden ones here, but some of the metal ones are passable. Would be much easier to clean.

These chickens have never had mites, but my last ones did. Their house lived in the carport and they had the whole garden all the time, but their mites somehow got in the house (I think through the aircon unit just between them and the living room). They were biting us too. We ended up having to bug bomb the house too.

 

Those wooden houses would not stop a fox by the way, they are very flimsy affairs.