My girls have always had free range of the place but recently i have put up a fence segrating the goats from the back yard so they don't have access to my back porch. Trying to decide the location of new coop. My 2 options would be to keep them in the back yard or the pasture with the goats that's attached to the back yard. I like having the girls close by and would like to keep them in the back yard but have a few concerns. Our garden is located in the backyard also. Last year we put up electric fence around the garden to keep the pig and chickens out. We are currently in the process of building raised beds in the garden that will be about 3-4 ft tall. I know the chickens will of course be able to get in raised beds but will they wreck all my plants if I don't keep them fenced out of the garden? Anyone had any experience with this?
There is a fence around the whole property so the girls are pretty safe and I do prefer to free range them or at least not confine them to a small run.
My second concern is with the chicken poo of course. My girls have a bad habit sleeping on my heatpump and my back steps currently when they have full access to a house we built for our pig. The pigs is a house pet and sleeps inside at night so im not sure when the chickens prefer the steps to a nice cozy house. They do sleep in the pig house in the winter though. But either way I end up having plenty of chicken poop on my steps, heatpump and in pigs house. I can tolerate a little poop here and there, its just in the areas where they sleep that they seem to poop the most. The only thing the pig house is missing to make it a legit coop would be nesting boxes and roosts so I'm thinking that if I build them new coop that has roosts and all I may actually be able to convince them to consistently sleep in the coop and not the other places they are so fond of. And I would of course like to do so without confining them to a run. Do you think this would be realistic?
There is a fence around the whole property so the girls are pretty safe and I do prefer to free range them or at least not confine them to a small run.
My second concern is with the chicken poo of course. My girls have a bad habit sleeping on my heatpump and my back steps currently when they have full access to a house we built for our pig. The pigs is a house pet and sleeps inside at night so im not sure when the chickens prefer the steps to a nice cozy house. They do sleep in the pig house in the winter though. But either way I end up having plenty of chicken poop on my steps, heatpump and in pigs house. I can tolerate a little poop here and there, its just in the areas where they sleep that they seem to poop the most. The only thing the pig house is missing to make it a legit coop would be nesting boxes and roosts so I'm thinking that if I build them new coop that has roosts and all I may actually be able to convince them to consistently sleep in the coop and not the other places they are so fond of. And I would of course like to do so without confining them to a run. Do you think this would be realistic?
