Roofed roosting bar at night and that's it...anyone with experience?

[Taranakian]

We're new to this whole chicken-keeping thing. Basically decided a month ago that it was finally time to get some after being on our rural acre for 4.5 years, bought some fertile eggs, an incubator, had an abysmal first hatch which I suspect is common (if not normal) (8 out of 20 eggs - lost one to natural causes and one to the dog/my carelessness) and now have 6x 11 day old mixed Orpington chicks officially transitioned to their outside, electricity-free brooder with a wool hen and 12 Indian Game/Dark Cornish eggs in the incubator.

In the last month or so I've read hundreds of topics on this site, and thousands of posts. It is what I do in the morning while my husband is reading the news, and what I fall asleep to at night. And I know I haven't even scratched the surface yet. I'm arming myself to give them as good a life as I can manage in the ways that make sense to me, eventually transitioning to as much of a hands-off flock as I can hope for.

Our acre is quite steep, so we terraced it immediately. We've got 5 (out of 6) terraces we'll make available to the chooks, though we'll fence each terrace in as an individual paddock so we can rotate the flock at its largest just before filling the freezer, and also isolate sets for breeding when we're building our flock up again for the next generation of my evolving spiral breeding plan while giving them plenty of room to meet their daily needs.

I've looked at hundreds of examples of coops here. Many of them are bigger and nicer than the bus we live in. While that's pretty neat, it also doesn't fit my land or management styles. Anything big enough to securely house even 8 chooks is too big to manipulate around our terraces, especially with the fruit trees planted in the middle of each one, and they would require a degree of management I would prefer to avoid if possible.

One thing to note is that we're in a mild climate. Our highs are in the upper-20s in summer (low-80sF) and in winter we'll only get down to -5 (23F) but only for a couple of hours overnight before it bounces back to low-to-mid double digits during the day (50s-low-60sF). As a rule, if we have wind/rain it's not *that* cold. If it's cold, it's still and clear.

So, what I'm wondering about is just building a number of roosting bars under a roof of three or four sides to protect them from driving rain and the prevailing wind and then just moving those around the terraces regularly enough to keep waste from piling up in any one area. Something not terribly dissimilar to a roof over a wishing well, just without the well (and with access from the back so they could hop up from the hill leading to the next terrace up. I could also dig some nesting boxes straight into the sides of the terraces, though if/how I'd teach/manipulate them to use the nesting boxes is still a learning-in-progress.

Finally, we do have predators - rats, mustelids (ferrets, stoats, weasels), hedgehogs, and possums (different than your American opossums), a few feral cats, and a hawk or two during the day over summer - and I know I'll lose some birds/eggs to them, but A) I make a living trapping so am not only comfortable, but reasonably skilled at doing it (bonus points for then using the predators to feed my flock), and B) I'm ok with a bit of loss knowing that breeding surviving members of the flock will provide me a more predator-proof flock in future.

I've read plenty of posts about free-ranging chooks, lots of people whose flock sleeps in trees, or under the awning/porch roof, or under the carport, even in climates more marginal than ours, so I know the idea is not terribly wrong-headed. I'm just, ultimately, looking for anyone who has experience with building super-minimalistic shelters for their birds to chime in and help me figure out what I don't know that I don't know.

Thoughts? Ideas? Personal attacks?

Cheers

 

[NatJ]

I think your idea of semi-sheltered roosting bars will work nicely for chickens to sleep in your climate, if you are not concerned about predators.

I do not have experience with most of the predators you have.

I could also dig some nesting boxes straight into the sides of the terraces, though if/how I'd teach/manipulate them to use the nesting boxes is still a learning-in-progress.

For nests, I would start with something really simple: a box sitting on the ground. I'm visualizing a wooden box that is open on one side, but some people have good results with a bucket turned on its side, or various other things that provide about the right amount of space with shelter on the top and 2 or 3 sides.

Single nests would be easy to lift into the next terrace when you are ready to move them.

For the number of chickens you have now, you probably only need one nest, or two at the most, unless some hens go broody.

Once your pullets grow up and start laying, you can see where they lay their eggs, and consider whether to change anything. If the pullets choose to make their own nest under a bush or in a corner or something like that, you might consider just letting them do that. If you put one or two fake eggs in the nest, they will often continue to lay in the same nest, even if you collect all the real eggs each day. (If you take all the eggs and leave the nest empty, they may go pick a different spot to build a nest, and then you have to hunt for it again. It's easier to have them keep using the same one you already found.)

we do have predators...I'm ok with a bit of loss knowing that breeding surviving members of the flock will provide me a more predator-proof flock in future.

I'm not sure whether "predator resistant" will actually matter for your chickens or not.

A chicken that is completely free can run, fly, choose a hidden roost for the night, or move to a new spot if this one has too much predator pressure. Since your chickens will be confined to your terraces, they will not have as many options. There may be ways they can behave to make themselves safer (example: ducking under a roof when a hawk flies overhead) and other things they cannot do (escape from a ferret that gets inside the terrace with them: the terrace limits their options for running or flying away.)

Whether you can afford to lose a few chickens to predators will also depend on how many chickens you have, so it might be a bigger deal at some seasons than others.

I've read plenty of posts about free-ranging chooks, lots of people whose flock sleeps in trees, or under the awning/porch roof, or under the carport, even in climates more marginal than ours, so I know the idea is not terribly wrong-headed. I'm just, ultimately, looking for anyone who has experience with building super-minimalistic shelters for their birds to chime in and help me figure out what I don't know that I don't know.

I have had chickens sleep in below-freezing conditions with just a tarp to shelter them from wind/rain/snow on the top plus 2 or 3 sides. The chickens were in a pen covered with hardware cloth to keep out predators, but of course the hardware cloth does little or nothing to keep out the weather, so the tarp was the only real "shelter" they had.

 

[Taranakian]

Thank you for such a thorough response, and for pointing out something I didn't realise I was inadvertently taking for granted.

For nests, I would start with something really simple: a box sitting on the ground. I'm visualizing a wooden box that is open on one side, but some people have good results with a bucket turned on its side, or various other things that provide about the right amount of space with shelter on the top and 2 or 3 sides.

Great idea, thanks! Much easier than digging into the terrace, aye? Also, I've got plenty of wood, constantly. We pick up enough pallets (heat treated only) on an annual basis to handle all of our kindling needs for the wood stove throughout winter - super easy to light, and handy for little random projects.

Once your pullets grow up and start laying, you can see where they lay their eggs, and consider whether to change anything. If the pullets choose to make their own nest under a bush or in a corner or something like that, you might consider just letting them do that.

This is largely my hope. I've seen suggestion over in the landrace thread that at least some people have noticed at least some of their chooks laying in their nesting boxes until just before they go broody, and then developing themselves a little hidden nest somewhere for the next few weeks. This is ideal behaviour for me, something I would absolutely select for, and possibly something I would specifically bring in fresh genetics for if I could find any breed that's more likely to do this than others (that's also available here). Making it really clear for me which eggs are for eating/preserving/selling and which are going to become our next generation to go in the freezer would be invaluable, and save me a lot of hemming and hawing for the first few years while getting some experience under the belt. Bonus points if they had a tendency to go broody in the colder months.

Since your chickens will be confined to your terraces, they will not have as many options. There may be ways they can behave to make themselves safer (example: ducking under a roof when a hawk flies overhead) and other things they cannot do (escape from a ferret that gets inside the terrace with them: the terrace limits their options for running or flying away.)

Absolutely. This makes sense, and is something I took for granted. Of course they can't escape the same way they would be able to if they were actually free-range. We do have 4-5 fruit trees, a handful of shrubs, and some tagasastes on each terrace with some self-seeded tasmanian blackwoods, and a few larger perennials dotted throughout also so they'll have reasonable shelter from hawks (though I'll plan/t to increase their number of hiding places). But you're right about ground-based predators, for sure. I'll have to give it time and see if I need to reassess my approach.

That said, it wouldn't be hard to electrify a strip of each leg supporting the roof structure high enough that the chooks won't contact it by accident in their day-to-day and wide enough that any predator trying to climb up at night couldn't help but contact it. It wouldn't stop predators from jumping onto the roost to get at the sleeping chooks, but if I were trying to plan for everything I'd just build myself a fully enclosed coop. Either way, I'll keep that in the back of my mind and chew on it for awhile.

Thanks again. I really appreciate your help sharpening up my general notion, and also the validation that I may not be too far off-track.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

We unofficially have a version of this. We have a Nestera coop sitting on a 3’ high platform, which the pullets have loved. In late July? early August? I added an L-shaped outdoor roost to the side of the platform for sleeping on hot summer nights.

Here we are on Oct 1 with cool nights, and they’re still out there.

The roofing is currently a battered tarp, but the plan is to build a for-real roof above the HWC topping the run in order to have (among other things) a roofed outdoor roost.

Note: they are in a run completely surrounded and covered with HWC. Their run is effectively an 8’x15’ open-air coop.