Separate rooms?

[MamaJohnson]

The coop and run I currently have comfortably fit my 24 hens. But it cost approx. $3000 to build. In the brooder are approx. 50 babies who are going to be needing a coop of their own pretty darn soon, and hubby is saying NO WAY to building another one that would need to be twice it's size. I guess I can't blame him.

So, I'm trying to find ways to cut corners for the new coop (nice hubby, nice...).

One idea I had was to turn an old playhouse into just a "nest house" with nests on the interior walls. It's not big enough for anything but nests though, so what if I just then built a shed style roost coop that sat "next door" to the nest house? One room for sleeping, one for business. Would this be confusing to the hens?

 

[Knock Kneed Hen]

I put up a post once about some friends that have their chickens exit the coop, go around the corner and up a ramp to lay their eggs. They all do it...even in the nastiest weather. Somewhere on the forums I also saw that someone had a roosting coop and across from it a nesting coop. Based on those two examples I'd say why not?!

 

[krcote]

I did this very thing once and all my hens waddled over to the laying house every day without fail.