I've been meaning to give an update on the chicken coop for a while, but kept putting it off. Whilst our chickens were quite happy using it. We have not been too keen. Mainly because it's not been working out quite as we wanted.
We've been looking into all sorts of chicken coops. Houses, simple coops, coops with a chicken run. Nothing really was to our liking. As we are in a mountaneous countryside setting, we also wanted to make sure the chickens are safe from predators, this includes stone martens, foxes and - as mentioned in another post - a lot of stray (and particularly in winter rather desperate) cats.
So in the end we decided to get a "easy to use" and "practical" (and not very cheap) coop. The idea is, that the chickens sit in the wings and lay eggs, we lift the lid up and grab the eggs. However, that didn't work because the chickens didn't lay the eggs in the nesting areas, in fact they even broke down the seperators.
On top of this, we wanted them to leave the coop without being open to predators, providing them enough leg room but still have the option for free roam. As we have six hens and one rooster, it should still provide plenty of space for less crowding. As a result we got a metal cage that we built around the coop and then a "mobile" fence we could adjust accordingly, but basically leave the cage door open.
The Quality
One thing that rather annoyed me was the fact, that items here in France, are so much more expensive than they were in the UK, for example. So that needed quite some getting used to. But when we received the coop it was rather expensive (190€) but the wood was cheap, very thin planks. Drill holes were not all in the right place, the paint was one layer which looked watery and as if it was applied by chucking the paint in a bucket over the coop. I was so annoyed about it, that I actually got all-weather paint and re-painted it myself again.
The cage seemed to be in a good shape. It cost about 250€ and first impressions were good. It was a bit tedious to build, but once it was up, it looked like it would last a while.
The problems with the coop
But really quick we realised, that the coop was not quite as practical as the website made it look like.
The coop comes with a bottom drawer that can be pulled out for cleaning and easy disposal of waste material, and then basically put back in the coop without major disturbance.
- That only works if the chickens don't plan to go back in the coop, so they basically needed to be temporarily moved, which we can't. A couple of times I pulled the drawer out and knocked chickens off their feet because they were either standing in the drawer or in the place where the drawer was (obviously when pushing it back in). That's not nice for the chickens.
- The drawer also quickly deformed which made it rather difficult to get it out or even worse: back in. The whole fiddling just stressed the chickens out unnecessarily.
- Technically you're also supposed to put a layer of hay in The drawer itself is only a couple of cm deep (if not less) so any hay would just get stuck when trying to push the drawer in, or even fall out before it gets anywhere near. It even blocked the rail a couple of times.
The roof was supposed to be screwed on, but if I screwed the roof on, it was very impractical to clean the coop. Just pulling the drawer out and cleaning from the side flaps (where the chickens were meant to lay their eggs) was just not an option. I also couldn't unscrew and fix the roof again, the wood would have crumbled quickly. Eventually, however, I had to screw it on as there were some strong winds that just blew the roof off. So once in the middle of the night I ran out into the rain with a flashlight and screws and screwdriver trying to attach the roof sides, in a wind that felt like it was just short of a hurricane.
It also came with a plastic cover stapled to the sloped roof bits. My very first impression was, that this coop will get wet. I don't know what to describe that plastic as, the only thing I can think of, are these fibre bags you get to cover plants and trees over winter, so they get some sunlight but are protected from rain, cold winds, etc. I have these and they don't really work. Luckily we had some old plastic sheeting we used to cover our outdoor furniture which I stapled on top of the existing cover.
As the paint of the coop was awful and I only painted the outside of the coop, the inside quickly deterioated as well. The chicken poops started getting into the wood, it started getting moist and bend. In some areas it even to soft and started peeeling layers off.
The screws or assembly bits etc. were generally of bad quality. The chickens managed twice to rip off the front door on a hinge. Eventually we decided to get an automatic door (though another reason for this was, that we have no direct access in the garden, it just made it easier for the chickens and of course for us).
There is also a sliding door but it gets easily full of soil, hay, and whatever particals collect, and therefore it gets quite difficult to slide the door anywhere. Often it would become stuck. This also made the door rather useless.
The chickens also started cuddling up on one side of the coop and the elevated wings (which they are supposed to use as nesting boxes so you can open the lid and just grab the eggs) were obviously not stable enough as the flooring of the nesting boxes literally just sacked down and when you went to look if the chickens are OK, you'd just see tiny little chicken feet sticking out. I only fixed it temporary, there was no final fix possible without major works. I basically used a concrete brick and squeezed it underneath.
And also fun fact: the coop came on legs, so was slightly above the ground, but the manufacturer failed to provide some sort of a ramp or stairs and quite soon we realised that this also interfered with the doors and flaps for them to get in, as it would have, for example, blocked the machanism or the drawer for cleaning. Eventually we found some brilliant stones in the garden which served as steps, but even the bigger ones had to be moved in order to open or close the doors/drawers.
The cage
The cage was about 250€ and basically consisted of - what looked to me - good solid steel bars interlinked with a push-in button mechanism, two rolls of chicken-wire and two rolls of steel wire to attach the chicken-wire fench to the bars and finally a very sturdy plastic sheet as a partial cover.
Attaching the chicken wire to the framce was very tedious as it had to be cut manually, the manual wasn't quite clear and often made no sense. In the end it was easier (especially since I built it alone) to use cable-ties which I slowly replaced over time.
Originally I was actually quite happy with the cage. It was solid, had no issues, no rust (which I expected to appear very quickly). We had it for about six months and then everything that can go wrong went wrong. When winter finally hit us, the stray cats started to get desperate, trying to find food. So whenever we provided food for the chickens, we now had to do that within the cage and a closed door. But those cats were desperate. To the point that they started pushing their faces really hard against the chicken wire fence and the harder they pushed the fence started to tire out. Eventually they managed to squeeze a whole big enough with their face, that they could squeeze through the fence and started eating all the food.
Then we had two days of extreme snow. So without us noticing snow built up really quickly on the roof and the weak spots of the cage collapsed. The weak spots indeed being the push-button-click-in mechanism of the bars. As they are thinner, and have holes, they are weaker and one bar actually just bent so hard, it was a V-shape. The bottom bit actually hit the wooden roof of the coop and made a small hole. So while it looked sturdy, the plastic cover it came with was actually its undoing.
What did we learn from this?
The most important bit: shops make/sell fancy chicken coops, mostly for backyard chickens in town or as pets. They make them look cute and imply practical features, which might work for a couple of chickens.
However, we have plenty of land, no protective wall or other town fences. If you buy a cute coop, there is a chance it won't survive some of the harsher weathers. I mean, let's face it, when it stormed the roof of ours blew off. When it rained, it rained inside. The moisture - and that's a big deal with a wooden chicken coop - made the wood deform (that definitely should not happen!) and weak, so weak the flooring broke through. All the features like the flaps to get the eggs out didn't really work because they started bending as well, the sliding doors got constantly stuck because of the hay and other materials getting stuck, etc.pp
Also, chickens do what they want. It's nice that they have a nesting area, but some chickens just won't take to it and just lay the eggs anywhere. Maybe with a new coop that will be different, we will see. But at this point, most of the time they dropped the eggs between the roosting bars and the nesting bits of the coop, they more or less obliterated. It came with a separator for "privacy" but they just all cuddled up together that the seperators eventually broke. It was of no use, also wasn't properly fixed, just slid into place with no resistance whatsoever.
Another thing that we realised quite quickly... chicken poo gets stuck on wood, so eventually you start scraping it off. The chicken coop we bought had a very thin layer of paint and it was a very thin plate of wood. So it gets damp from the poo, the poo dries in, you try to scrape it off, but the wood might still be damp, so your basically scraping pieces of wood off as well.
What now?
We decided we would build our own chicken coop. Cut it a loss, because there is not much you can do with whatever is left from the old coop and cage. I was about to design my own but then hubby's project management eagerness kicked in and he designed a whole new coop by watching - same as me - loads of YouTube videos picking the best features and most practical features. We are lucky in a sense, that this house has a lot of wood. We barely had to buy anything (just the sturdy timber frame bits). The rest are good quality wood slabs, planks, beams, etc. that were left here by my family (two of which were carpenters/joiners). We had new windows fitted in the house, so there were also other items we could recycle for the coop.
But we were also worried about the cold. There are plenty of videos and guide websites out there that tell you what you need to do for the chickens in winter, i.e. rubbing their combs with vaseline to keep them from getting frostbite. Well, if you're watching English videos like me, there is a chance you get a lot of American videos and we all know they have harsher winters. But also, by chance (I admit I didn't check that before) our chickens are winter hardy. They stopped laying eggs for 3 months (they literally just started this week again) but otherwise they don't mind the cold at all. So we were considering fitting our coop with electricity for a heating lamp as well. But after loads of horror reports on coops catching fire, we decided that if they survived the cold in the old coop (well, more or less) the new coop will be much safer and we'll just insulate it for more comfort (also in summer when it gets a bit too hot!). So we'll see what my husband will have produced another time.