Indoor coop

[mommyof4littles]

Hi, I am not sure if this is where I am supposed to put this but...

I have 2 seramas, a buff orpington and a crested polish. I brought them inside when winter temps started to really drop in november to around 20 f at night (the seramas were in by september at night)

I took (this is pretty funny) a large dog kennel and a rabbit coop and put them so the doors faced each other and put an old bird cage on top of rabbit cage with a nesting box as the serama hen and her b/f really like to snuggle and sleep. They stopped laying in september and no one ever laid very often maybe a couple times a week. (serama hen born jan 08, other two mid march) Now that they are indoors I get 3 eggs like clock work every day. The lights are a) 100 watt and b) 40 watt. I turn on one or the other depending on whether they look tired. They eat all our food scraps along with their feed. Lights go on at 6:30 am and go off around 10:30 at night and I usually let them take a nap during the noon hour with no lights (there are small windows). Any idea which thing is getting them laying so regularly? I obviously wish to repeat it when I build their coop and hoped someone might have an idea.

Oh and if anyone is interested in doing this, I am just putting a new layer of bedding down (cedar and pine mix) every week and one cage is raised on wire and one is down on ground level so they can decide what they want to walk on at the moment. They do not sit on the roosting bars either. We kept a few different pots of plants (mesclun mix, herbs that get too big, tomatoes) for greens as I do not always have fresh leftovers for them. So far we have had no smell issues. When people learn we have them down there when they visit they are always like wow, I can't smell them. The only problem I have sometimes is I use a stretchy exercise band to hold everything in place and the big chicken (orp) knows how to open it now from watching me and likes to lay HER eggs next to the furnace and sleep on them I think she thinks she is allowed to hatch them but our male is maybe 8 or 9 inches tall and she is close to 2 foot tall so I cant imagine he is accomplishing much with her lol. Or in the cloth diaper sink. Once in the toilet.

 

[Mahonri]

You are brave.

I love my chickens but they'd never live indoors.

We finally had to let go of our budgie, He caused to much dust and fluff... and he could always figure out a way to get out of his cage.

 

[AngelzFyre]

Probably the combination of additional light and also their age is helping with the laying. If they stopped in September they did so because of either molting or the reduction in daylight I'd imagine and now have picked back up with the additional light during the day.

I would not use the cedar shavings at all. They can cause severe respiratory distress in chickens and are not recommended. Pine are okay as well as aspen and some use shredded paper.
The rest of the setup sounds unique and seems to work well for you

.
You'd be surprised how crafty the roos can get as far as getting where they need to be.

 

[mommyof4littles]

Thanks I was not aware of that. I did it for the nice smell and no one had ever told me they were dangerous! They won't be living inside after this year ends but my son had health problems and the current coop was too cold for them once temps dropped. So I did not get the coop finished on time basically.

 

[KrisRose]

I had a new hen that I quarantined in my basement. Was very easy to take care of her compared to taking care of a coop. She would get loney and come upstairs and sit at the doorway to the kitchen. I also have two bantum house chickens.
Instead of the cedar shavings try wood pellets that you can get at TSC. They are made for horses. There are threads on here where folks are reporting how good they also are at keeping smell down.

 

[mommyof4littles]

Awesome thankyou!