PolloGal
Songster
Hi everyone. Need some help with a safety decision for my girls. I need to go away overnight...which doesn’t happen often. I will be gone no more than 24 hours...maybe less. Is my run safe enough to let the girls stay out all day, then put themselves up to roost for the night? This is what I have...1 Ecoflex outside pen enclosure (about 3x4) with cinder blocks around the outside base of it—attached to an plastic Ecoflex (not jumbo) coop. We cut an opening in the side of it and attached it to a plastic double garbage can container that we modified as a roost area...where the lid opens at the top and the entire front opens. So the girls can go into the Ecoflex pen, then enter into the Ecoflex coop, then enter into the larger container to roost. This is all inside a completely enclosed 10 X 40 enclosure with a metal roof and 1/4” hard wire cloth around it. On the outside I have cinderblocks over the hardwire cloth that extends about 6” beyond the pen along the ground. Then I also have an electric fence around the entire thing. I have 4 girls and My girls just started laying. I have recently experienced a pecking problem with my white and barred rocks. The white rock actually lost part of her comb because of it. She is all healed but still gets pecked a bit...seems low on the totem pole. So I am worried about enclosing them in a small area together. Normally if I go away, I would close them inside the Ecoflex pen, so if a predator ever did get in (my husband says nothing can get into this entire pen but me) they would also have to work to get into the Ecoflex pen too. I did this setup so they would still have a small outside area to go into if I had to go away or had an unusual situation arise-wanting them to be safe...but with the pecking problem, I am worried about my white rock (Bella) being further injured if enclosed in the small space with the barred rock (Roxy). They have ‘put themselves to bed’ at night alone before, but I have always locked everything up afterwards. Do I have enough protection for them to be in the larger 10 X 40 pen for the day and then safely go to roost in the container through the little pen door and then the coop door which would be left open all night? If not, I am not sure how to handle it. We are in the middle of adding gutters to re-route some water so it is a bit of a shambles right now. I hope the pictures help anyway.
