Housing And Accessories

Before you rush out and get hens you need to decide where and how you are going to house them. This will most likely be your biggest outlay of cash so you will want to get it right.

With so many chicken coop suppliers both on and offline it can feel a bit overwhelming when you first start out. Hopefully after this section of the guide you will know what to look for in a chicken coop and what to avoid.

The basic function of a coop.

The basic function of a chicken coop is to provide your hens with a place to lay their eggs and a safe and secure place to roost at night. This is all they generally do in the coop – lay eggs and rest safely at night.

Chickens are natural foragers, and from sun up to sun down they will want to be out and about scratching around for food. So they should also have access to well-drained areas for them to scratch about.  You will need to make sure that you can provide this for them.

Now I won’t lie – chickens left to free range the entire day will have a somewhat negative effect on the aesthetics of your garden. Initially we let ours free range around the garden for most of the day, but after a few months they had managed to rid it entirely of weeds, which was great but also most of our pretty plants. Even our nice establish lawn started to look a little worse for wear.

I was amazed at just how destructive they can be, digging holes which would put most dogs to shame and ‘pruning’ a considerable amount of foliage!

Now you might well be having second thoughts with this revelation. “What about my garden, my lawn, my veggie patch?” The fact is you will need to give over a bit of space for your chickens. How you do this is really up to you.

We have chicken coops available that have extendable runs which in total only take up a few meters of space. These would give you the flexibility of having an all in one designated area for your chickens where they have free access to an enclosed outside area to roam.

That being said I would still recommend letting your hens out late in the afternoon for a change of scene.  This allows them an hour or two to peck and scratch around your garden for tasty shoots, grubs or worms.

I recommend the late afternoon because as night approaches they are more open to the idea of going back in their coop, without you working up a sweat trying to persuade them!

Knowing what to look for in a chicken coop.

There are 7 important questions you should ask yourself when looking at any chicken coop. To learn what these are simply download our free 25 page keeping chickens guide.