Hen Houses and What To Look For

Like us, chickens have some basic requirements when it comes to housing. Irrespective of whether you intend to keep chickens for a few breakfast eggs or looking to breed chicks for other farmers you have a moral duty to provide stress free, comfortable surroundings for your flock and as the old saying goes...a happy chicken is a productive chicken.

The first thing you need is to make sure that your chickens are protected from the environment. Chickens do not like drafty weather and can get sick. Their coop should be dry to protect them from wet weather. Additionally, if you live in a very cold environment, you should consider low lighting when building a chicken coop as this can provide some extra heat to keep the chickens warm.

Chickens are social little birds and like to have a bit of room to roam around. This also helps chickens lower in the pecking order to run away if they need to. So be sure that your coop has a generous run where they can forage for food, scratch away, hunts for delicacies like grubs, flap their wings and roll around in the dust.

If you have insufficient room in your chicken coop design, your chickens will start misbehaving just like little kids cooped up. They will get grumpy, pick fights with each other and some of the smaller, more timid chickens may get henpecked. It's better to provide more space than too little because at least you have room to grow your flock as well.

Chickens need enough standing room in their coop. They also prefer to roost off the floor at night, so make sure you don't skimp on vertical space either. In fact, it is easier to maintain a coop that you can walk into yourself, so do keep this in mind if you are buying a coop or designing a coop from scratch.

Chickens are pretty active during the day. They are up at dawn and go to bed when the sun goes down. Like us, they need some natural light as it influences their egg laying. They also need light to be able to eat and drink. 

So in the winter months, it may be necessary to install some artificial lighting to keep the chickens socially interacting as much as possible as well as to promote the laying of eggs. As mentioned earlier, it may also be useful to have low light heat lamps on if it's very cold to provide a little more warmth for the hens at night.