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That sounds like a good idea. I have a dog crate she could stay in overnight. Thanks.

Good idea, but by the time it gets really cold in the early hours the bottle will be cold as well, so do nothing. There is a danger she sleeps on it, in which case it may do far more harm than good because she will lose body heat to it. There is a danger, often overlooked, when chicken's body temperature drops too low. Below normal temperatures the gut flora dies, so even when their temperature is restored, eating doesn't give the energy they need because the flora isn't there to convert the food. How do we know? We've had this problem and it takes a week from the probiotics being given until the flora is restored sufficiently. Their poos will be very grainy, like they haven't digested, and they will be fluffed up and shivering. When they stand there not moving they are so cold they have just shut down. So my advice is to do what we did last night and bring her in from her coop when she has gone in and into a cage in the house. Then take her out again in the morning and put her into the coop so she can come out and remain imprinted to her coop. It only takes one night inside to confuse them. In our case we accept than and she's in the house for as long as she wants. We have kitchen roll and disinfectant spray to hand and all the floors are tiled.

Ask for the discount retrospectively. I did last year and was given it in similar circumstances.

One of my pair of hens has recently passed away. The remaining hen appears to be quite happy on her own, but I was advised to get a new companion for her ASAP. Unfortunately, that's very difficult at this time of year. Usually, they would snuggle up together on cold nights, so I'm wondering about maybe placing a hot water bottle (not too hot, wrapped in a towel) in the coop. Does anyone do this?

I bought a 12' x 9' walk-in run, delivered only last week. Discount code was not applicable to walk-in runs. Now I see there's a 20% Black Friday discount on the run, knocking around £200 off. I know Omlet is a business, but it really would've been nice if maybe someone there had said to wait a few days. I probably still would've paid out the near £1k cost, by buying a few add-ons. Grrr.

Thanks TedS. I'll have a think about it.

They have very soft feet and those rubber mats don't sound good to walk on. We have some here, but only to catch the gravel in your boots from off the drive when walking into the garage/ workshop. We have all ours on soft earth which is poo picked daily. The key element to any run is keeping the rain out, or if it gets in making sure it can escape and doesn't wet the feeders. I think the pavers would be a better idea.

We are going to be moving house and have lost the last of our many chickens over the years. I will need to rebuild the Cube and Eglus as they were dismantled to deep clean. Only one run for an Eglu We are based in Cheshire, just outside Crewe. Eglu and run £150 with original water container and feed container. Eglu without run £100 Cube without run with feed and water holder £200

Hi all! just wondered if anyone has used rubber matting as a base for their run? As in the mud mats with the holes that allow grass to poke through… I’m moving our walk in run and would like a more winter proof set up as they’re just on mud at the moment which is rather grim. I’m torn between the matting over grass or throwing some pavers down? which do people prefer and why? thankyou!

Hello, I'm looking for an Eglu Cube and also a walk in run ideally with fox skirt in good condition. I'm based in South Manchester but happy to travel a little to collect. Can collect with a trailer

Hello is this still available?

Sorry, unable to do this. Thanks for the interest.

Hi Donna, we have a walk in run for our hens and use a 1/4" mesh on the floor (keeps out the rats!) with about 4" of wood/bark chip on top. They regularly dig down to the wire but we've never had any claw issues. Just needs raking flat occasionally otherwise it gets piled up in one end of the run!

Where are you based? And does the run have the fox skirt?

You can help them feather up more quickly by slightly increasing their protein intake. We give them a few sunflower hearts (with the shell removed) as a treat. Now I do mean a few, so no more than a pinch, because they are 40% protein and excessive amounts of protein I believe causes all manner of serious problems. What feed are they on at the moment?

I have been having the same issue with my door, bought in July/August and by October I was getting the 'door blocked' notification when it wasn't blocked at all. After a few days it then began disconnecting from the app and 'blocking' which was leaving the door open before I got home from work (the whole reason I got the door was so I knew the girls were safe when I got back from work!). After this the batteries kept draining and I am going through 2 lots of batteries a week which is ridiculous... Omlet took 2 weeks to finally send me a new control panel which I have had for 2 days and within 3 hours began doing exactly the same thing as the last control panel.... I am really unimpressed as this was a lot of money and is causing more stress than what I had before!!

How do I fatten my molting chickens up

My hens are currently in a sizeable run fenced with Omlet's flexible plastic fencing. Unfortunately, my dogs easily break in - allowing the hens to escape. We've decided to buy a walk-in run to overcome this. I notice in some images that some owners have placed chicken wire or similar on the ground, sometimes covered with a substrate such as sand. My hens are relentless diggers and their current run is like a minefield, and when they escape they immediately start turning over the fresh grass. As it's natural behaviour, I'm interested to hear whether you think using wire to minimise digging damage could be cruel, or might even be harmful if they were to catch a claw. If you have some kind of wire in place, what substrate do you use on top of it? I was thinking sand, but there may be better options. Thanks.

I live in north-east Scotland, where it can get very cold in winter. I've always scattered sawdust in the bottom tray and straw in the top tray, increasing the straw as temperatures drop. I clean up poop daily and replace all the sawdust and straw weekly. The hens love the new straw, inspecting it as soon as I'm done. My question is, is bedding necessary in an Omlet coop? None of the Omlet photos show it, but the company sells it. I also use the Omlet extreme temperature blanket in winter.

I have learnt the hard way, after years of trying to get rid of red mites, a real solution. It's called Exzolt, and it's amazing! I've had recurring red mites for longer than I can remember, and I had tried everything: permethrin spray, permethrin dust everywhere, Elector PSP, bifenthrin, DE, ivermectin, on the hens and all over the coop. I even took the the entire coop apart a few times, took the siding off, the roof off, all the way down to the studs, and sprayed everywhere... no matter what I did, there was always a couple left somewhere, and they would reproduce. Anyway, I found Exzolt while searching the web, and it's available for backyard chicken keepers in Europe. Unfortunately, it's only available for commercial poultry facilities here in the US. I called Merck and the sales person said they might one day bring a small volume presentation on the market in the US, but they didn't know when that would happen... But here's the solution: the active ingredient in Ezxolt is fluralaner, and this is available for mite treatments in dogs, called Bravecto. If you can get it from your vet, great, just ask for a prescription for one dog chew! https://www.chewy.com/bravecto-1-month-chews-dogs-44-99-lbs/dp/281396 You can also buy it from VetShopMax in Australia, and they will ship it to the US without a prescription. This is what I used, the dog chews, that I bought from the Australian site, and they shipped it to me. I split the chew into tiny chunks and gave it to my hens in the appropriate dosage, and now all my mites are gone. ALL GONE! It's literally a miracle! The fluralaner dose in chickens is 0.5mg/kg body weight. So if your hens are around 2kg (~4.4 lbs), then you would give them 1mg orally. If they are 3kg (6.6 lbs), then you would give 1.5mg. I bought the dog chew, weighed it and split it up so that I had tiny little chunks of about 1 to 2mg for each of my hens. You may need a precise digital scale to weigh the chunks. The Bravecto chew for small 4-9 lbs dogs contains 45mg fluralaner. You have to split this into 20 to 45 little chunks, depending on the weight of your hens, and administer a chunk orally to each hen. And the next day, you will find lots of dead mites on the perches that have fed, but then died after feeding. And repeat this process in 7 days. There are several studies on the exzolt.com website that you can read, regarding the efficacy of fluralaner against red poultry mites and some on pubmed too. This is an article where they used either the topical fluralaner, or oral fluralaner, and they evaluated 0.5mg/kg and 2.5mg/kg per hen: https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13071-022-05555-6 I have not tried the topical formulation, but it seemed effective in the publication referenced above, so that might be another solution. I read somewhere that Bravecto is not very water-soluble, so I don't recommend going that route. Good luck!

Would you sell the coop on its own?

We have a large Omlet chicken coop and an Omlet large Eglu Cube with a manual door for sale. We also have an electric automatic coop door, brand new but never fitted. The total cost of this package would be over £2,000 (see pictures) We are asking £1,000.

Could simply be the daylight hours and the air temperature?As more mature birds they won't lay unless the conditions for rearing chicks is right. If they are not laying their energy requirements are a lot lower, so no mad dash to fill themselves with food. Expect them to restart in Spring.

We have three white KCs about 2-3 years old. They layed fine every day up to about August and then stopped and started moulting. This we expected but they have finished moulting and not restarted laying. Furthermore they just sit in their run all day, lathargic. Before, they used to dash out in the morning and spend the day grazing and foraging. Any advice welcome. Jon.

Not sure if you have it working now. We had to experiment a bit with light level. It works great for some but we had a challenging environment- the coop would often be moved under trees making it difficult for the light sensor. Time-based can be tricky in the autumn/winter as the clocks move so fast you are forever tweaking it. In the end we settled on Alexa control - I'm not sure if you have one but you can actually get it to open and close your coop. You can do this at certain times, or even better, relative to real local dawn or dusk. We have ours open/close about 30mins after dawn and dusk. In your case, you could make Alexa open it later in the morning, but shut it at dusk. Using Alexa solved the light level niggles for us.