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.
- Image via Wikipedia
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
