Poorly chicken

[merlina]

mine are currently living in an ark with a lovely perch - and they sleep in the nestbox. Tried to persuade them otherwise, they remained unconvinced. They don't seem to be suffering for it (and do plenty of running and stretching during the day)

[Kaiser1]

Eglus are not suitable for hens. Period. No perches and plastic! They also DO get red mite!! They shd be banned in my view.

[Beantree]

It has been cleverly designed to use the available manufacturing processes by someone with little or no experience of keeping chickens unfortunately. As such it is a 'first attempt' coop' and no effort has been made to improve it. No perches is terrible, but the use of plastic does make it easy to clean and it won't rot, although it will fade and break up eventually as all plastic things do. So It certainly shouldn't be banned because I'm sure there are chickens living in far worse accommodation, having seen some examples first hand. I have to be honest and tell you @Kaiser1 that my first coop wasn't much better, the second was far better but was subsequently modified to bring it up to the further improved standard of the third pair made, the next batch of three are probably as good as you can get (designed for mass production) and the fourth is even better but is suffering from poor quality wood. What it needs is an Omlet type plastic design for the roof!

[sandyhas3chucks]

They do indeed get red mite . But unlike wood it is super easy to take apart and get rid of them . I definitely agree re the roosting bars and  have our proper bars in mine. 

I don't rate the new designs at all..

. 

[Haze]

I got 2 new young chickens this year and bought an eglu for the first time. Both dead within 6 months. Don't know if this is connected, but interesting. I had 3 chickens and an eglu go up is WAY too small for 3 chickens, they are all bantams but would not all go in there. It's too small and I wish I'd never bought it.

Omlet say a go up is suitable for up to FOUR chickens. Says it all really.

[Cat tails]

On 7/27/2023 at 12:39 PM, Haze said:

I got 2 new young chickens this year and bought an eglu for the first time. Both dead within 6 months. Don't know if this is connected, but interesting. I had 3 chickens and an eglu go up is WAY too small for 3 chickens, they are all bantams but would not all go in there. It's too small and I wish I'd never bought it.

Omlet say a go up is suitable for up to FOUR chickens. Says it all really.

I have 4 bantams in my Go Up and it fits fine. 

[sandyhas3chucks]

I've had 3 full size and it's fine . They only sleep in there .. 

What did you vet say they died of? That's very upsetting .

[Beantree]

Well @Haze, it really does sound to me as though your first two chickens were carrying red mite, infested the coop and died of blood loss. Of course the replacement bantams wouldn't go in there if that was the case; full of very hungry red mite. It takes at least 9 months for the red mite to die off from starvation. Nothing to do with the size of the coop. It all depends what the vet said of course, which was.....?

[sandyhas3chucks]

Wow that's quite a leap.. of course it's possible but they are super easy to see in an eglu.. 

 

[Haze]

I clean the coop fully every couple of days and I've never seen any mites. I still have one of the original hens and she's still fine at 11 YO, just the 2 new young ones that died. I had one of them up the vet a few times, no red mites mentioned. She had antibiotic shots 4 times and I thought she was getting better but then just keeled over last month. I didn't get an autopsy. The second died last weekend overnight, again I didn't get an autopsy. It was sudden and a shock as she'd been absolutely fine the night before & had laid that day. I didn't know anything was wrong with her. We don't have any avian vets where I live so the vets weren't great anyway, I doubt they would have conducted an autopsy. But every night the girls wouldn't want to go in the coop, I'd often have to stand outside shooing them into the run and once I'd got them in there they'd stay down in the run as long as they could before reluctantly eventually going up into the coop. Sometimes one or another would even sleep on the ground in the run overnight. This is my experience, they hated it. I'd get something bigger next time, with proper roosts - as the one hen I have that's still alive sleeps in the nesting box in there on the straw and the other two never seemed to actually "roost" on those bars in the eglu, like they would in a tree.

They are great to clean though, but my hens didn't like it and I think it's way too small. I hate to think of any hens living their entire lives in one with a standard run attached

Also rats can fit through the bars on the eglu run! I had to remove the food box in there after seeing large rats just run through as if the bars on the run weren't even there.