Hen House

There has been a lot of minor construction since we started our backyard chicken farm. We erected some fencing, a few fence doors were put in, completed a woodshed floor as to have a place for the straw and wood chips we need, and of course our coop/hen house.
By far, the most challenging part was getting a decent hen house built. It had to have roosts, laying boxes, chicken access, electricity, white light, heat, ventilation, food and water, human access to gather eggs, and in the end...it needed to be predator proof as well as able to handle an Alaskan winter. To say the least, the rest of the light construction was sort of caveman-ish compared to that!

The first major re-build, was due to my own rookie mistakes...I was wrong when I thought that chickens slept in their laying area. I assumed the chickens slept in their nests every night, and laid eggs there as well. So I constructed our first design to have six laying nests and no roosts. Then, as I learned how chickens slept in roosts and shared laying nests. I put in the roosts above the second story of nests to solve this mis-step, and figured they would just have extra area to lay eggs.

This first change may have been okay, except, the roosts were too close to the ceiling of the hen house, and this put the chickens dangerously close to electrical wires and fire hazards. Lowering only the roosts themselves would make the top laying boxes the highest roosts. Chickens sleep in the highest available space they can roost on, and they poop a lot when they sleep. If they were to roost on the top laying boxes, the eggs they lay would get really dirty, and can spread salmonella a lot easier. So the top floor had to go, as seen here on the top photo. I also, put in a thermometer that is easy to read, and 2 lights on timers more centrally located on the ceiling.

Next up, food and water. So the weather here in Juneau, Alaska basically hovers in the 40°-50 °F realm, and it is cloudy a lot of the time. In the winter, we can get blistering clear cold days and even get blizzards where temperatures can drop below freezing for a couple of days at a time.I don't have any practical application experience, but from what I read, chickens will hunker down in their hen house during such storms, yet want to venture out on the clear days. Without a heating device, the water in the chicken run will most definitely freeze during below freezing temperatures, so I wanted to put both a food and water source in the hen house, so I could lock them in there during a storm and not deprive them of nutrients and hydration.

We used to put the water and food container we kept in the brooder in there, but now that they don't have to go back and forth, we installed a waterer and feeder. I built the feeder out of wood, and mounted it to the wall. Nicholas calls it the Piano feeder ...because it looks like an upright piano. We also bought some bird watering nipples, that the chicks drink from, they are designed specifically for chickens.You just drill a 3/8 hole in the bottom of any plastic container, pop um in, and you got yourself a watering system the chicks cannot contaminate.  So we made a small one, hung it in the hen house.

The last modification was installing my thermostat to regulate the temperature in the hen house from fluctuating due to wind or sun. I have a thermometer installed at a low/coldest point down by the chicken door, and I have another mounted just higher than the thermostat. The top temperature is always 67°-72°...and the lower temperature is always around 62°-65°. I can't say enough about the thermostat. Not only has it solved any temperature issues I had, but it saves me electricity. If the sun shows up, the light is hardly on at all. When its cold, the heat lamp is on around 70% of the time, usually 40 minutes on and 20 minutes off, give or take. Maybe some hardcore types will scoff at such an extravagant set up. I really just wanted to make it so I didn't have to do much thinking. :)

UPDATE: Originally I stated the following: "The top temperature is always 67°-72°...and the lower temperature is always around 62°-65°" But after the hens had full down plumage, the thermostat was lowered to 50° (just enough to keep their drinking water from freezing, which all drinking water is housed in the hen house during winter), making the top temperature 50° and the lower temperature 40°. I didn't want to mis-lead folks into thinking that I keep my hen house at a toasty 70°.