Rehoming Battery Hens

Whilst researching chicken keeping a while back I found an article about the deep litter method.

This is a traditional method of  dealing with chicken waste. It requires minimal maintenance, doesn’t smell, produces heat which keeps the hens warm over winter and is super eco.

Putting it simply all you need to start the process is an earth floor to your hen-house with about 6-8 inches of brown material such as wood chip, pine or oak leaves on top. As the chickens waste builds up you just add layers of pine shavings or bedding. The girls scratch around in it and mix it up for you and you end up with beautiful compost you can put straight onto your garden once or twice a year.  As I said this is the simplistic version and it does need a little more attention than that but not as much as a conventional hen house does.

Personally I love the sound of it, so we are going to try it in our new hen-house. The only reservations I have is that the 6×4 shed the hens are going into won’t be big enough for the system to work properly and that the heat generated will make it too warm for the chickens in their new super warm shed.

I will be buying a thermometer to monitor the temperature. If it becomes too warm we will just have to cut more vents into the structure, that’s simple enough to manage I hope. At the end of the day if it all goes horribly wrong we will revert to the method we use at the moment of cleaning out daily. The girls will still have a nice new sparkly hen-house to live in that is safe and warm!

If anyone has used this system and has any advice please get in touch. I’ll be very grateful for any help!

It’s been a long time coming but finally we have put up our new hen-house.

We decided to buy a new hen-house as ours had seen its best days and needed replacing. 

Having spent hours looking at hen houses on the internet and in shops I was very disappointed at the quality and exorbitant prices of most of them. Added to that with 13 hens to house the coops we saw were rarely big enough for our requirements. So we decided to buy a shed and adapt it.

Looking at sheds we discovered a plastic one that we felt would be perfect. Plastic would mean minimal maintenance. As I understand red mite don’t like plastic and are less likely to take up residence. On top of that there’s nothing to rot or paint, bonus!

The plastic itself is double thickness which gives it, it’s strength and will also insulate the hens in winter. Keeping them nice and warm. The down side is it could be too warm so I am having to buy extra ventilation grills to ensure adequate ventilation and air flow.

Hens need good air flow without it being draughty to stay healthy. Thankfully I can put the vents up high enough so the hens won’t be caught in any draughts but will be kept cool enough. I will also be buying a thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature and make sure it’s not too hot or cold.

So we brought the hen-house and plotted out where it was going to go. A few weekends ago having dug the footings out we finally found the time to lay the foundations.

Now I have learned a very valuable lesson here. Brick laying is harder than it seems!

Having dug the footings and laid the bricks we realised our new laid foundations were not square, Panic! This would mean the shed wouldn’t fit.

Well after much scratching of heads we decided we would have to sit the shed on wood. So the shed and wood are at one angle and the foundations at another. Still as my wonderful Mark says nothing is straight in nature!

Now all we have to do is finish the paving so we can get to the shed without getting muddy, lower the level of earth in the run to accommodate the wood chip that we’re putting down and sort out the nesting boxes and perches, simple.

Still it should all be finished by Christmas……………I hope!

Well after much discussion, cogitation and note making we have started renovating the hen run and house. The last one had just about run it’s course and we needed to get things sorted before the winter really sets in.

This weekend the old gate into the run was removed along with the rotting posts and a bigger gate made. I had the task of paining all the wood with wood preservative.

As you can see from my photo below (yeah, I know, it’s scary!) I’m not the tidiest of painters. In my defence, it doesn’t help that some of the wood has to be painted through chicken wire. The wire catches the brush and that culminates in splashing the paint everywhere. Well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! If anyone has any suggestions on how I can paint wood through chicken wire without being coated with as much paint as the wood I’d be very grateful!

Tomorrow I’m buying a resin shed and adapting it and we’re going to try the deep litter method. Apparently this is supposed to work quite well. However I am still a little concerned about the smell in the summer with the run being so close to the neighbours, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Fingers crossed!

This  is what we are all about. Please help support this campaign.

Do you have a notice board at work you could put this poster on or maybe in the back of your car. It is down to us as the consumer to change how we shop and stop the inhumane business of caged hens.