Chicken house?

[JerryCarr]

Aloha everyone! After moderate success at vegetable gardening here in HPP, we are ready to add chickens to our mini-farm, mostly for egg production. (They will no doubt become pets quickly.)

Do chicken houses here in Hawaii follow the same general format as on the mainland, or do they have different architecture? Does anyone know where there might be plans on-line for a Hawaiian version?

I know some folks don't even bother with coops or houses, but I think the hens might like a sheltered place to lay. Also, a coop would make egg gathering easier. Any advice will be appreciated.

Mahalo,
Jerry

[mella l]

Hi Jerry, I recall a discussion on the coqui thread/threads about chickens and someone posted that a chicken coop would be good because the mongoose love eggs. I don't know if this is fact, but I suspect protecting your chickens would be a good idea.

Also they eat coqui, so if they roam during the daylight hours and you coax them back to their coop in the evenings with some scratch, I think you would have the best of luck with them. Aloha, Mella L

mella l

[Hotzcatz]

Aloha Jerry,

Mongoose do love to eat chicken eggs. That's what we use to bait the mongoose trap with, and it works really well. Mongoose will also kill the chickens if they can catch them. We let the chickens run free to get away from mongoose and the dogs also keep the mongooses out of the back yard. Border collies just herd the chickens, they don't eat them so it works well.

Our chicken coop is a welded metal frame (it was a used dog pen we dug out of the gulch) with a wire bottom and a tin roof. There is also tin across the windward side for more shelter. On one side is two nesting boxes. There is chicken wire around the other sides and a door which we usually leave open so the girls can go in and out whenever they want. The whole chicken coop is about three feet off the ground so the mongooses can't get in. The chickens can jump up into the coop. There are roosts inside and a coffee can which has a dripping hose to keep it filled.

It is kind of a scruffy looking chicken coop, but the bougainville has now grown over it so that has improved the looks enormously. The surinam cherry tree next to the coop also grows really well now, too.

We also put a bit of roof gutter with a perch next to it just outside under the dining room window so we can open the window and put the chicken feed into the gutter. Kinda a rural version of your grannie's bird feeder outside the kitchen window routine.

A hui hou,
Cathy

[nanasohana]

You know we had the most fantastic producing cherry trees by the rabbit hutches we had once in oklahoma....chicken poop is fantastic fertilizer

[mella l]

Cathy I am just really interested in visiting with you and your Rube Goldberg chicken feeding system. I love the description!! Yes Nancy the rabbit hutch at my old home fed the most gorgeous hedge of gardenia's. They were the best in the entire county until the 20 year 3 day snow/frost cooked them! Hozit going Nancy? I'll check your pics next!

How exciting and what wonderful people and places await our next adventure. Thanks for sharing this with us!! Aloha, Mella L

mella l

[JerryCarr]

Mahalo to all for the good advice and good stories. The value of the manure is one more reason to have chickens.

My mother raised them for Christmas money in Texas when I was kid . One year, a rare fall tornado hit the ranch, and it sucked up the poor chickens. They dropped out of the sky for miles around. People in that part of Texas are like Punatics. Within a few days dozens of people from all over came driving up, each with a few chickens, so we had Christmas that year, despite the setback.

Cathy, your metal framing sounds like a good idea. Although it might rust, it probably will outlast wood. And, yes, I have anticipated the mongoose problems. They are all around here. Does the metal frame inhibit them, or is it just being off the ground that does the trick?

And Mella, we do intend to let them roam in the daytime. We will have to invest in some cross-fencing to keep them out of the veggie patch. They love collard greens.

Aloha,
Jerry

[Hotzcatz]

We just used the metal frame since it was already existing, not because we thought it was a better building material. We hoisted it out of the gulch and put it up in the back yard. We have another chicken coop which is made from one of those metal shelving units Costco sells. We got it from a yard sale so we've got $2 invested in it. Edge welded a couple of the shelves together and set the bottom of the metal legs on concrete footings. Scrap wood across the back, tin roof on the top and two nesting boxes on the side. I was building it to replace the other ugly coop, but we ended up with two coops. They all sleep in the ugly coop but some of them like to lay eggs in the new coop.

Having it about three feet off the ground is the "anti-mongoose" part of the coop. When a hen is setting on eggs, we move her into one of those big plastic dog kennels until the chicks are a couple weeks old. (Baby chicks can't make the jump into the coop.) Then they get locked into the new chicken coop until they are big enough to run away from mongooses. Then we let them out and they can sleep where ever they want. Usually most of them will go hang out with everyone else in the ugly chicken coop.

The chicken feeder at the back window is a pair of closet shelf/ pole brackets with a bit of closet pole between them and a bit of plastic roof gutter where the closet shelf would normally go on the bracket. The chickens jump from the rock wall to the pole roost. We kinda use the chicken feeder as a garbage disposal. Open the window and put the scraps from the plates into the feeder. Makes plate scraping more fun when there are interested chickens watching.