I love sprouting! I just use big mason jars with cheesecloth over the top. They don't need light unless you want to get them longer and green and even then any little bit of light works. I'll toss em in the window that faces a side yard that has a fence right there and hardly gets any...
Hemlock (both water and poison) is not safe for chickens. Water hemlock used to grow so thick around here that a lot of folks would lose livestock every spring to it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2369382
You could just sprout the seed during the winter. Most seeds only take a couple of days to a week depending on far along you want them and its really easy to do in the house.