POULTRY HOUSING
The housing is probably one of the most important piece's of equipment a poultry keeper will have to purchase. Alot has to be taken into consideration when buying a unit, the breed and size of the fowl that will be living in it being the most important. Hens can be kept in arks perfectly when moved to fresh grass every couple of days. This is a good way to keep your fowl if you have problems with predators.
I think the main thing here is to firmly put the chickens first. I spent a long time worrying about them when I first kept hens and since then, about 8 years, I've had them living in about 5 homes and found them in their own made ones as well !
As long as it's dry and cosy, you'll have no problems. I remember the place in the TV series 'Ballykissangel' where they kept their chickens in an old car ! This sums it up so well. If you want a fancy place, by all means give them a fancy place, but they don't have to have that.
No harm in a bit of character though !!
So, they say the minimum sizes should be 4 square feet per bird on the outside and 1 square feet for each bird inside - and I reckon that to be about right and goes along with what I've had before. For instance, my shed, which is 6' x 4' has kept 22 hens quite well.
CHICKEN ARKS / MOVEABLE HOUSING
The joy of the ark is that you can move it around the garden thus giving the chickens fresh grass to eat and scratch every day or so. The other good points are you know where they are and can easily shut them in for the night.
The negative is that no matter where they go on your lawn, they're going to leave their mark and this will take a few days, or weeks depending on how often you move the Ark, to recover.
Currently we are constructing our new breeding pens we hope to have step by step photo's of all the work up soon . The pens are being marked out and we are trying to make them as keeper friendly as we can , making egg collection and cleaning an easy task.
These are purpose built houses designed especially or our breeding program to hold a max of 8 birds , but we only house 5 birds in them . They are made of preserved shiplap 16mm in witdh the house measures 4' x 3' x 5' , the frame is made with 2" x 1.5 " treated timber and retreated again because of its contact with the ground.
This is a view of the internal nest box which has a seperate external door for easy collection of eggs.
