Advice on eglu versus wooden hen house please

[beingmaisie]

Hi, I can imagine this has been asked many times but as i am new to this i'm hoping you will take pity on me.

 

I have 3 x 9 day old chicks at present looking for a new home soon. I have the chance of a second hand eglu whilst hubby wants to build me a wooden house. As i am the only one who's going to be cleaning it out i would prefer an eglu for convenience.

 

Has anyone here swapped an eglu for a traditional house and if so why. They look so easy to maintain and clean but just how many chickens can live in one. I may want to add to my flock later on, does this mean i need another eglu then.

 

Finally, has anyone found that their ladies lay more eggs in an eglu or a wooden house.

 

Any advice you can give me about this would be brilliant.

 

thanks from a very happy chicken newbie

Gill

[Redwing]

I started off with an Eglu and now have a wooden house as well as I have two separate flocks.

 

If you only have three chooks an Eglu would be ideal as its perfect for three and so easy to clean, I love mine

 

I do like the wooden house too as it is well designed and reasonably easy to clean

 

If you don't get an Eglu my recommendation is to get a good quality wooden house, really cheap ones don't last and I have read many horror stories of constant maintenance and them being tricky to keep clean

[beingmaisie]

Thanks Tasha,

 

It is the keeping clean aspect that bothers me most. Hubby thinks they are too small and cruel to the chickens. Will have to keep working on him eh.

 

Gill

[Redwing]

My mum threatened to call the RSPCA when I got my Eglu Silly lady

 

When you see the chickens all piled up in one corner of an Eglu you realise there is loads of space inside - they are bigger than they look! the run size does restrict you a bit but the same goes for a wooden house, try to give them decent run space but like I say they will all pile in to the house no problems

[beingmaisie]

Hubby has agreed so am looking forward to getting it now. We are building a run for them, max 12 feet long hopefully by 4 feet wide, so tbey should be fine with that.

 

As its only got one nest box do you get eggs laid at different times of the day as they take turns?

[Ain't Nobody Here]

They can take turns or sometimes they snuggle up together if they just can't wait . Congratulations on persuading your OH . You won't regret it!

[Jules.]

My friend has a wooden hen house, & all 8 of his girls sleep in the nest box

[Redwing]

One of my hens lays her egg at night/early hours, two lay mid morning and one about lunchtime so we don't tend to have a problem, the worst we have had is an egg on the roosting bars

 

Well done on the persuading, you won't regret it for a moment

[Guest]

HI

I can only comment on wooden housing..will rot easily/more absorbant so will hold water when u clean it out in winter and mites can be more of a problem with wood.

I had a forsham duck house and despite putting kitchen lino on the floor from the start and preservative it completely rotted and rats knawed the floor out. It had wood worm but did have a hard life with my ducks.

 

I have only got my cube yesterday and can see the advantages of plastic etc(sorry not eglu so cant comment on that one at all)

 

Forsham is a good make so I wouldnt knock it ..but i am impressed by what i have seen in omlet range.

good luck indie

[Guest]

Thanks Tasha,

 

It is the keeping clean aspect that bothers me most. Hubby thinks they are too small and cruel to the chickens. Will have to keep working on him eh.

 

Gill

 

someone on one of the threads posted pics of her chicken underneath the others buried by feathers!

Today mine were fighting to be at the bottom of the pile for dustbathing..they were on top of each other..they seem to thrive on being huddled..so wouldnt worry about room..the 3 hybrids i had were in a rabbit hutch small for a week and didnt hate it that much as during they day they would go inside and lie down

 

Get an omlet product I dont think u will be disappointed at all

[Hen Watch]

Hubby has agreed so am looking forward to getting it now. We are building a run for them, max 12 feet long hopefully by 4 feet wide, so tbey should be fine with that.

 

As its only got one nest box do you get eggs laid at different times of the day as they take turns?

 

I've only ever had a so I can't comment on wooden housing. I find the dead easy to clean but the wooden roosting bars drive me to distraction, taking ages to dry out in the sun. I'm going to treat myself the nice new plastic roosting bars they now sell.

 

My girls mostly lay at different times so nest box is no problem.

[Egluntyne]

You won't regret getting an Eglu.

 

The dreaded Red mite is much harder to eradicate from a wooden house. If you are unlucky enough to get an infestation in an Eglu, it will be much easier to shift.

[BarbaraJ]

i've gone from a wooden coop to a , best thing i ever did for me , so much easier to clean. Don't think the chickens really care which they lived in as didn't get any mite problems with our coop.

The major advantage for me with the versus the is the height. if you want more chickens worth considering a as theres tons of room in it!!

[beingmaisie]

Thank you everyone for your help. i was buying from a friend of a friend but the price seems to have gone up so unless we can come to an arrangement then its back to the wooden house idea or keep an eye out on here for one.

[redfrock]

If you are planning on building the run anyway, the eglus and cubes are considerably cheaper from Omlet without the run, if that is any help

[Ain't Nobody Here]

Did you know you can phone Omlet and ask if they have any reconditioned eglus/cubes? They knock £40 ish off an eglu (not sure what for a cube). I bought one and couldn't tell it wasn't new.

[beingmaisie]

Did you know you can phone Omlet and ask if they have any reconditioned eglus/cubes? They knock £40 ish off an eglu (not sure what for a cube). I bought one and couldn't tell it wasn't new.

 

No I never knew that, thank you, ill get onto that right away.

[*mummy_hen*]

If you are planning on building the run, you could consider building a wooden house to attach to the run. That is what my clever husband did.

 

[Ain't Nobody Here]

That is so beautiful . You should send it to Kate to put on the Run Inspiration thread (I don't think it's there already is it?).

[Redwing]

That is ace, I want one!

[*mummy_hen*]

Thank you - we have since adapted it slighty and added a corrugated roof over the uncovered part as when the girls were new and featherless they didn't understand half was dry and always stood in the pouring rain.

 

How do i get it added to the thread? Do i need to PM Kate or just leave a message on the ongoing thread?

[Ain't Nobody Here]

I just PM'd her with a photo of mine!

[*mummy_hen*]

Jusr PM'd her so hopefully mine will be on the thread soon!

[Willow]

I love that pretty white hen house it is so pretty.

 

wooden vs eglu is tough and I struggled to decide between eglu/cube/wooden house when I expanded my flock (I already had an eglu). But in the end ease of cleaning won out. I keep quail in a wooden house and I hate cleaning them out so the afternoon spent faffing about with the quail and the few mins with the eglu decided me (unfortunately I don't think an eglu would work for quail or I'd get them one too).

 

The other deciding factor was my SIL declaring that they would have to burn their wooden house the red mite infestation had got so bad. However she decided to stick with a wooden house as she felt if you got red mite you couldn't get rid of it She decided my lack of red mite problems in an eglu was luck. possible, I don't have any experience of red mite to draw on

 

I'd decided to buy an eglu without a run as one day my OH will build my promised WIR and without run is much cheaper but I got the chance to buy an eglu 2nd hand locally with a run so opted for that.