Remember when I first posted about the construction of our Chicken Hotel, over a year ago?
Well it is finally finished! Tim and Steven finished the Chicken Hotel a couple weeks ago. Two nights ago, the hens were forced to sleep in there. Boy were they not happy. Only one of them laid an egg. I bet they had their tail feathers between their legs and quickly ran over to the hen house in the morning. Things will get better, chickens (like humans) don’t like change.
Our hens have a top-notch Chicken Hotel. We built it on an old hay rack. There are access doors on the outside, for us to easily grab eggs and freshen feed without entering the hotel.
There are plenty of nesting boxes for all the ladies. The floor is made of chicken wire to keep the hotel clean and to conveniently spread the nutrient dense chicken manure as the Hotel moves throughout the pastures.
In the back there are roosting bars for the chickens to sleep on.
It is even complete with a rain barrel to supply the watering system.
The goal is to get the hens out of the yard in the next week or two and out to pasture. We are guessing this will have to be done at night, or they will probably come right back to the house.
Change is tough. What are some ways you deal with changes? Any advice for the hens?
Emily
Thanks for stopping by– I love your site, especially this chicken hotel! We added hens to our farm this summer and hope for eggs by September, but our girls currently live in a coop made of straw bales. I’m hoping to get something nicer soon, but I doubt they’ll live in style like this 😉
I’ll be back here as well!
Glad I found you I had the same idea with an old hay wagon I have and to catch water off the metal roof – morning condensation possibly via an eavestrough and of course rain water. From the pictures, I could not detect your water system in the hotel or out? What are you running off the barrel?
Were you overall happy with the first yr of operation or any tweaks for this season? We got snow here again today (!) in my part of Canada but I hope one day the snow will melt or that someone creates a hybrid that will free range for snowballs 😉 Kari
We are pretty happy with it. The rain barrel has a hose on it to fill the waters we put outside during the day (gravity).
The only problem we had the first year was an owl kept getting in. We had to make the door smaller, so he couldn’t fly in.