Over the years as the number of hens increased I’ve built hen houses to accommodate them, after all how hard can it be to knock up a hen house? The latest is n0 7, I think. The early ones were built from plywood and you wouldn’t describe them as pretty. They were designed to make best use of a sheet of ply. In fact one of our friends nick named number 2 the “sub station” after I painted it light blue.
The design improved, no 3 was an un-intentional homage to L S Lowry, in that it’s tall and thin. Next I moved away from plywood to tongue and groove mainly because exterior ply seems to delaminate in no time at all these days. No 3 was a beauty, looks like a Swiss chalet with a tongue and groove roof as well as walls. Probably the prettiest to date, but chuffing heavy though. The side with the nest box, can be completely removed just lifting a couple of hooks, which is perfect for getting in and mucking out. Unfortunately it’s too heavy for Amanda to remove on her own, that plus the fact that I couldn’t find any tanilised tongue and groove and it’s expensive meant nos 4 and 5 used feather edge planking.
At this point I was building the houses in sections, sort of flat pack style, and then screwing them to 3×3 or 4×4 inch posts. Which meant I could assemble them in situ and the legs were built in from the beginning. I had to build them in situ as they were getting too heavy to move on a sack trolley.
The problem with feather edge is that the thin edge splits easily and you end up have to pilot drill all the planks, nightmare, takes forever. No 6 ,my best to date, uses inch planking it ridiculously strong measures 2000mm x 1400 x 1200mm high and probably weights 200Kg. Now 6 months ago that would have been a major problem, not now, a Case 885 with four wheel drive and a loader solved that problem.
No 6 is our biggest hen house, I was under the cosh to finish before the new batch of 25 hybrids turned up. Now it might sound silly now but I hadn’t measured the width of the gate into the Chicken run. Fortunately I didn’t have to admit it as it just fitted in with maybe a couple of inches spare on each side.
Why no 7, good question, nos 2 and 3 are on their last legs and I thought I’d build no 7 before I forgot all the small but important tweaks I’d made to no 6. No 7 is slightly smaller 1900 x 1300. It probably should be 1800 x 1220 to make best use of a sheet of ply which I use for the floor but maybe no 8 will get that modification! I also improved the nest box lids, as they tended to break off on the earlier models.
In April we had a serious problem with crows or magpies stealing eggs from one of the hen houses. So out of desperation and a desire not to put a net over the whole run (33m x 16m) I decided to recycle some old clothes. As a friend said “that’s really scary but not the best scarecrow I’ve seen.” Sadly the crows agreed with her and I then resorted to using a radio tuned to BBC radio 4. That stopped their thieving activities!
Dumblehole 