Poorly chicken

[alexsampson]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering about wooden coops in all their beauty and thought...is there anything actually wrong with wooden coops?

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the look of the eglus and the cube. The protection, the insulation, the ease of cleaning and just the amazing look of it.

 

Still I love the wooden coop as well and wanted to know, what is wrong with them and is it a monumental design fault?

 

Thanks Guys!!

 

Alex

[surfer_chicken]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering about wooden coops in all their beauty and thought...is there anything actually wrong with wooden coops?

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the look of the eglus and the cube. The protection, the insulation, the ease of cleaning and just the amazing look of it.

 

Still I love the wooden coop as well and wanted to know, what is wrong with them and is it a monumental design fault?

 

Thanks Guys!!

 

Alex

 

As you already mentioned, they're not as fool-proof to foxes as the eglu and harder to clean. The only other major problem is that they attract red mites a lot easier as there are more nooks and crannies for them to hide in. I'm a little biased as I only have an eglu, but I think they're well worth the investment in the long run. Plenty of people on here do use wooden coops though, so they're still fine but take a little extra work to keep everything in order

[Redwing]

I have wooden coops and also Eglus and I like them all

 

The key thing with any coop is good design, a well designed, well made wooden coop is every bit as easy to keep clean and red mite free as the Eglu

[Lavenders_Blue]

Nope, there is nothing wrong with wooden coops at all. I have two and I am very happy with them.

 

I line my wooden coops with newspaper to make it very easy to lift the poo out every few days, it also means the poo does not weld itself onto the wood (which can happen ).

 

I spray the coop with poultry shield 2-3 times a year to keep it disinfected and mite free - a lot of people seem to do this a lot more regularly with an Eglu! I also treat the outside with a wood preservative yearly which takes about an hour, probably less in fact, to apply. So wooden coops don't need to be a huge hassle to maintain.

 

I don't have any trouble with mites in my coops either (touch wood ). It's not a given that wooden coops = red mites as so many people on here seem to think is the case.

 

I like my wooden coops!

[BizzyMomma]

I am currently using a wooden coop for Sunny & Eva, it's a nice design and every part of the coop itself is easily accessable for cleaning, I also line mine with newspaper to prevent any caking on of undesirable debris, the coop itself is quite high up so no chance of mice and rats sneaking in underneath, I am quite new to keeping chickens but have kept horses for a long time and believe me when I tell you that the best housing is that which is easily cleaned!

 

Last week-end I became the proud owner of a 2nd hand this will be sited in the next few days and I shall be searching for some pure breed girls to go in there over the next month or so, so I shall be able to compare the 2 sorts of housing more fully then!

[Mum]

I have both a wooden coop and a few eglus.

 

I love the nesting box of the wooden coop; I don't have to bend so far like I do with the eglu.

Red mite was neither better nor worse in either; it's about good husbandry really.

The wooden coop could be "dressed up" to look like something special, if I wanted, whereas the Eglu is as is (unless I wanted to go the sticker route, which I don't).

 

Cleaning is cleaning whichever you get. It's as broad as it's long, really.

 

Last March I had my broody hen in an eglu and attached run. The rest of my flock of that time were housed in the wooden coop. Woke one morning to find all my girls in the coop had gone! The wire was secure, no tunnelling, the door catch was sound; the wily old fox (more likely a weaning vixen to be honest) had gained entry by going up through the floor of the overhanging nest box - a weakness we'd neither considered, spotted or appreciated until that point! Hard lesson learned.

 

The nest box base was then super-secured.

 

I've since bought a WIR, more eglus, more girls and the wooden coop is now my "hospital wing"

 

How did the broody fair in the Eglu?

Well, despite the toughness of the plastic, there most definately were scratch marks on the eglu - but, no damage and the run was not tampered with at all.

 

I began with an Eglu and I had the money to make that investment - even though my "flock" at that time was one, solitary ex-batt (my friend thought I was mad because hers were housed in rabbit hutches at night) and who lived for less than a year. It would be another few years before I was able to put it to use again.

 

Wooden coops are a more economical option, hence why I bought mine when I wanted to increase the number of chickens I had.

 

If I were to start again, knowing what I know now, I'd probably start with a wooden coop. Simply because, for some people, the reality of chicken keeping doesn't meet up with the dream; for others, life/circumstances change etc and the lure of keeping chickens dulls sooner than they expected. If I had known what I know now, once Morehens Disease struck I would have saved very hard for a Cube and not gone down the classic route (although to be fair, the Cube didn't exist when I began).

 

That's my take on things anyway

[chunkdoobiest]

Hi Alex,

 

The only thing I would say is be prepared to spend money on a coop, wooden or plastic. I bought a 'flat pack' chicken coop to begin with for £150 thinking that it would be a good starter coop. In the 8 months I've repaired it several times and i'm just glad this winter has been mild so far, as I don't think it would be much good otherwise. Needless to say I'm ordering a Cube after much debate about buying a wooden one. You definitely get what you pay for.

 

Matt