Nacktschnecken omlet Cube

[Dizzy-Deb]

Hi,

 

as the lighter mornings approach us, and my girls start to make a racket a bit earlier, am thinking along the lines of making some kind of blackout cover to go over the cube.

 

Has anyone made one and found it worked ??

 

What sort of material have you used. I was thinking of some of the black weed suppressant stuff you can buy from gardening places... being as its lightweight. Do you think it would work. ?

 

Thanks xx

[karlotta]

I had blackout material over my eglu housing my bantam cockerels (3 at the time) for a while, but they crowed whether it was light or not... (even at 4am in the winter) so I moved them into the garage overnight. I bought blackout curtains from ebay and used 2 layers. I'm not sure it would be ideal in the summer as it inevitable covers the ventilation a bit. I also found it didn't enjoy the frost/snow and pretty much fell apart TBH.

 

I think cockerels will simply crow whatever you do...

 

edited because I see you DON"T have a cockerel!!! I think keeping them dark would work much better with girls, but i suspect they will still hear the wild birds etc (I was woken up by the blackbirds/robins singing at 5am for the last week) so it may not solve it 100%!

[alet_chicken]

Hi, I used the black weed suppressant material last year, and it worked really well to keep morning noise down. I bought a 2 x 5 m sheet from B&Q, folded it double, put eyelets in the corners and it was a perfect size to cover my Cube and the first bit of the run (the run itself had a dark tarpaulin cover). It breathes pretty well, so I was not too worried about ventilation. I did however take it off when I let them out in the morning as I was concerned that direct sunlight on the black sheet would heat the Cube up.

 

I will do something similar this year (redesigning things a bit because we now have a WIR). Unfortunately the original sheet is no more (it's weatherproof but not mouse-proof ), but I am making a new one, from slightly thicker weed suppressant material that I had bought on a roll.