A good chicken house must have a roost for the chooks

Just like people chickens like to sleep at night. And just like people they have their favourite bed. Unlike people their bed allows them to sleep upright.

You see chickens sleep standing up. To do so they need to be able to stand on a perch, which is usually housed in the chicken house. Some people are unsure about why there are these horizontal bars in chook sheds, and that’s the explanation.

We’ve been asked how much space a chicken needs to roost on, and what size the perches should be.

Generally speaking your average backyard chook needs somewhere around 8 to 10 inches, say 200 to 250 centimetres, on which to roost. Ours have way more than this however if you look at them at night they are usually all snuggled up together, and one end of the perch is empty. So this distance of around 8 inches is ample.

If you have bantams for instance 5 or 6 inches is probably enough, but if you have some of the larger breeds including meat birds you would need to allow a little more.

What width perches are required? The chickens stand on the perch and so if it is a wide flat surface they cannot grip with their toes. Our perches would be slightly narrower than 2 inches wide, and our chooks seem quite happy with this.

It is important that the perch be lifted above the ground. It is not sufficient merely to lay rods on the ground. Chickens have probably have been bred, over many generations, from wild birds that would sleep in the branches of trees, and the instinct of perching above the ground is still strong. Chickens prefer to sleep above the ground, and although no one knows exactly how high, at least 12 to 18 inches would be the minimum at our guess.

It also important to remember that chickens will still poop whilst on their perch. So you’ll find that a pile of chicken droppings will build up directly underneath the perch. For this reason it is important to ensure that your perches are not placed directly above anything else such as food or water, otherwise these will become contaminated. Read the rest of this entry

For a small number of chickens a portable chicken house works well

Here’s a good video showing you a great portable chicken house. It’s only suitable for a small number of chooks, it won’t work for dozens of chooks, but a small chicken house like this one is fine for 2 or 3 chooks.

The beauty of this type of chicken house is that you can move it around from time to time. Chooks scratch around, and so if you leave your hen house on the same patch of grass all the time it won’t do the grass any good at all.

So move it around every few days and it won’t harm the grass, in fact it will benefit it from all the droppings left behind.

Of course you can always allow your chooks to free range in the garden during the day, just don’t forget to put them back in the hen house at night, and close the door.

There’s foxes everywhere.

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