Cover for chickens

[Kit]

Being a newbie, I am not sure about a few things - 1 - Do chickens go outside in the rain, or stay inside their coop? We're debating on whether to add a covered area so they can go outside and not get wet. 2- Do you put a feeder and waterer both inside and outside, so they can come and go, in and out. I have a coop, soon to be enclosed run, and plan to put the chickies up at night. Thanks for any input - babies are almost 4 wks old now, so will be going outside in a few weeks.

 

[Netherworldtaken]

Our girls like the rain, (best bug time ever). If it's a hard rain they put themselves up in the coop. And our coop is elevated 18" so the girls can take cover under their coop. We only have the food and water inside their coop and feed them "treats" and "scrapes" outside in the pen.

 

[dawg53]

Mine dont like the rain and will head for cover. Their house is elevated 3 feet off the ground and will go under it when it rains. I'd say about 80% of the pen is covered with tarp and I have the feeders hanging there, their feed stays dry all the time, water is there as well.

 

[Want Less]

Our chickens dont mind the rain unless it is really nasty outside, then they just head back into the henhouse until it passes. We're in eastern NC so our winters are mild for the most part, but our chickens even ventured out into the snow we got without thinking twice (it was only a couple inches)

As for feeding, we started off when we built our first coop with a feeder inside as well as outside. They never touched the one inside the henhouse, even when they were locked up at night. Because of that, we stopped putting food in the henhouse and now we just have it in the run area outside. We dont keep water in the henhouse either because again, they were touching it all night.

Our hens are locked up from dusk when they put themselves to bed until usually about 5am when we unlock & open all the doors.

But quite honestly, everybody does things differently and I know a lot of people do feed their chickens in the henhouses

Whatever works best for you and your flock is what you should do.

 

[Kit]

Thanks for all the useful input - it just saved us about $300 and lots of work!