Keeping chickens on wire

[Faraz1]

So i have previously seen posts where quails have been kept on wire floors. Why cant chickens also be kept in the same way ?

 

[NatJ]

So i have previously seen posts where quails have been kept on wire floors. Why cant chickens also be kept in the same way ?

Chickens can be kept on wire floors. Commercial laying hens in cages are the most obvious example.

For small-scale home use, McMurray hatchery has been selling a wire-floored cage for at least 30 years. Since they are still selling it, I assume people keep buying it.
https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/poultry_layer_cage.html

It is also fairly common for people to use wire-floored cages for certain temporary situations, like breaking a broody hen or separating a sick/injured chicken from the rest of the flock.

But chickens prefer to stand on things that are not wire, and chickens like to scratch around in the dirt or bedding. So people who keep chickens as pets, and want them to be happy, will usually not keep them on wire floors.

Chickens also need much more space per bird than quail do, so chicken cages would need to be much bigger, or else have very few birds per cage. For people who keep a large number of chickens, it is often easier to have a large group in one large pen, that the person can walk into for tending, instead of having them in many small cages with wire floors. Building a large cage with a wire floor means the wire must be supported somehow or else it will sag and maybe break. Cleaning underneath a large area is also difficult, as compared with cleaning or dumping a tray under a small area.

There is also the matter of cleaning. Some people prefer to have plenty of bedding on the floor of a chicken coop, and clean it out at some interval (frequent or rare, depending on how much bedding and how many chickens.) That is different than removing the droppings from under a wire-floored cage. I won't say that one is better or worse than the other, just that they are different, and some people have strong preferences one way or the other.

 

[Faraz1]

Thank you for the detailed response. I was thinking to repurpose a quail coop with a wire floor where they can go and roost at night (I will adapt the quail coop to have a roosting bar)

During the day they will free range in the garden.

 

[Krugerrand]

One concern I would have is that since chickens are so much bigger than quail, droppings that would fall through a wire floor for smaller bird might not for a larger bird. That could get really messy and difficult to clean.

 

[NatJ]

Thank you for the detailed response. I was thinking to repurpose a quail coop with a wire floor where they can go and roost at night (I will adapt the quail coop to have a roosting bar)

During the day they will free range in the garden.

That sounds like it could work well