The Chicken Coop (Part Two)

The dining hall was devised to stop our increasing rat problem.  We had rats getting in the run every night and eating any left over lay pellets, they were digging under the run and we would come out each day to find little round holes in the mud.  We put bricks over the holes as they popped up, hoping that they would run out of places to dig, this turned out to be a mistake as they just dug under the bricks too.  Shay once picked up a brick to move it to another part of the run and there was a rat under it looking up at her.  Not cool.

Instead of trying to rat proof the run Shay had the idea that it would be better to make an area that both kept the food nice and dry, was totally rat proof, and also gave them somewhere warm to hang out in the morning before Shay opens the run so they can go out and have a scratch around.

I made the dining hall out of wood from the dump again, I ended up buying a bundle of 10 garden stakes to finish it off towards the end because I ran out of wood and pickings were getting slim at the dump because of winter finally arriving.  I tried to keep it as light as possible so it was easy to move but it also had to be strong enough to last a few years.  I wanted the whole front to open so that we could scrape it out easily so rather than going for a single door that opened upwards as was the original plan, we went with double doors.  Every outside surface is either covered in plastic then chicken wire, or just chicken wire.  If the rats decide they can eat through wire I might have a problem, but right until that moment, this is indestructible.

Since adding the dining hall we have not had any rats.  We have had them replaced with sparrows.

Now instead of 2 or 3 rats stealing food every night we get 10 - 20 sparrows flying in to eat the food.  I picked one off with my air rifle a couple of days ago and when it fell down into the chicken run they instantly pecked it to death, was most gruesome.

I am not sure what to do about the sparrows yet.

We have also added an outside fenced area that can be moved around.   This new garden bar has been quite handy as its easy to move and we can move it very quickly.  There are essentially 3 areas for the birds now.

• The Suite and dining hall area.
• The run
• The outside garden bar

We can close them in to any of these areas, we usually leave them in the run and close off the garden bar if we go out.

So this is where we are at now, I am sure there will be more modifications to go as when summer rolls around it will introduce a whole new set of issues.  I am hoping once we have had the chooks for a year or so I will have most of the major problems ironed out.

Here is a video of me explaining everything.

Cheers.