Reviews by DebinCR

Some climates are wet or tropical, and rust happens quicker. Here in Costa Rica I decided to buy corrugated aluminum sheets and bury them 8" in the ground. The interior floors are concrete. Hardware cloth is above ground and behind the aluminum sheets. There are also wood louvers that can be latched at night and open in the day for ventilation. In almost 9 years, not one problem. Since we're older, it's comforting to know that no real maintenance is needed.

This covers just about everything! I have to watch out for heat in the tropics, and may add more hardware cloth on the sides for extra ventilation. I do have pretty good shade. One thing I did was use corrugated aluminum buried 8" deep around the base - it doesn't rust. more expensive, but I'll never need to re-do this heavy job. Thanks for a great article!

Great information! My weirdest eggs were a triple-yolk and a conjoined, giant 'siamese' egg from a new layer!

All great ideas! I took the steps idea and instead created a sort of wooden roller coaster out of 1X3 wood, with all sorts of angles & connections. It's a real jungle gym! they get lots of exercise hopping around, especially if I spike it with bits of corn that they search for. I added some natural branch perches too.

This helped a LOT! My young Orpingtons are all laying. One of them lays a LOT of double-yolked eggs, maybe 2 a week, but it's slowing down a bit. I even had one triple-yolk!! There's still the odd shell-less egg, so I've upped the amount of toasted eggshell available. They don't seem to like powdered calcium supplements & no oyster shell is available here.

Very thorough with adjustments for all situations. I have 7 mongrel 'garden' chickens and 3 big fat Orpingtons. I had to take down a divider between 2 nest boxes to accommodate hens that cover a 9"x15" area when sitting! They're all in the coop at night & free range all day, with access to the coop. The 'jardineros' like to roost in trees during the day if it's hot. Over the past 9 months I've made a few changes to the coop to make life easier for them, especially in width of ramps in the coop for the Orpingtons.

I agree with all of it, and have experienced most of it in the 7 months I've had chickens. The only hint I could add is about waterers. I put a triangle of wood branches around my waterers that are no closer than 2" to it and no further than about 6-7". Each piece is about 4" thick. This prevents them from pooping in my circular waterers (easy to clean) and prevents the chickens from kicking bedding into the water (I use rice hulls on a packed black sand substrate, common materials in Costa Rica). They can step inside the triangle or perch on the wood to drink, but there's not enough space to get comfy...

I'm going to work on engineering those poop boards, which I love. They would save my back! I'm thinking of putting them on a pivot with wing nuts, tilt them down to clean. Scrape them off into my poop bucket with a dustpan & eliminate the front raised edge....