- May 26, 2012
- 30
- 1
- 24
Hi Everyone,
New to all of this chicken stuff, but after just a month of becoming a proud dad to 6 chicks and an Eglu Cube I have to say I'm fairly addicted! I did a fair amount of researching before settling on the Cube, mainly to convince myself it was worth the $1500 outlay, which, at the time seemed an outrageous price for a glorified plastic box. I looked around this forum the Omlet forum and the www to make my mind up as well as speaking to the Eglu people in the UK.
Buying and Shipping:
After much trepidation I decided to go ahead and buy the Cube, but who to purchase it from? I'm so pleased I ordered it from Backyard Chickens and not Omlet as after placing the order my cube arrived within 5 days (I live in Philly, their holding warehouse is in NY i think)...by contrast, the Omlet people were quoting me at least a month for delivery.
The Build:
Slight pain is the Cube arrives in 5 large boxes shipped to any local Greyhound shipping office. I thought I'd have to rent a truck but all five boxes (each one is light enough for one person to manage) fitted into my SUV (Merc R350 for size comparison) with room to spare. The actual build probably took 2.5 hours, if I had to do it again I could manage it in around an hour...there's a fair bit of head scratching to do as the instructions aren't bad but you have to be EXTREMELY careful to put various pieces the right way around, particularly confusing was the back wheel assembly. The actual run is held together with what appears to be fairly flimsy plastic tabs,although after being up now for a month aren't showing any signs of ware. Everything else was relatively painless and soon the Cube was up and ready to receive the chicks.
Introducing the Chicks:
So, we have 6 (Chop, Suey, Nugget, Scramble, Patti and Licken) who, at the time were 6 weeks old. From day one they seemed to love their environment. For me, though, because they were pretty small, they weren't quite ready for all the wonderful functions that now are working so well:
Glug and Grub...these are two plastic containers that fit on to the sides of the run, one (glug) for water, one (grub) for food. They’re designed to hold decent amounts of food and water and were too high (even when set on the lowest part of the run) for the chicks to reach up and use them. This meant having to use traditional water jars and chick feeds, not really a problem, rather a bit of a pain since the run height is rather small and to get in to it you have to crouch down.
Ladder in to the Cube:
Again, the chicks were too small to jump up on to the first rung....cured by placing a couple of bricks to make it easier. Also, the space in between the rungs was a challenge for them for a couple of weeks...this caused the biggest pain, having to catch them and manually place them in the coop at bedtime....now, with the chicks aged 8 weeks, they zip up and down like pros as well as taking themselves off to bed each night!
Living with the Cube:
We absolutely love the set up, being able to wheel the thing around is probably the best thing about the Cube along with the ease of cleaning and maintenance. My wife was very worried about the potential chicken poo smells, very happy to report that as long as you empty the easy litter trays, we’re relatively chicken smell free....ah, happy days!
New to all of this chicken stuff, but after just a month of becoming a proud dad to 6 chicks and an Eglu Cube I have to say I'm fairly addicted! I did a fair amount of researching before settling on the Cube, mainly to convince myself it was worth the $1500 outlay, which, at the time seemed an outrageous price for a glorified plastic box. I looked around this forum the Omlet forum and the www to make my mind up as well as speaking to the Eglu people in the UK.
Buying and Shipping:
After much trepidation I decided to go ahead and buy the Cube, but who to purchase it from? I'm so pleased I ordered it from Backyard Chickens and not Omlet as after placing the order my cube arrived within 5 days (I live in Philly, their holding warehouse is in NY i think)...by contrast, the Omlet people were quoting me at least a month for delivery.
The Build:
Slight pain is the Cube arrives in 5 large boxes shipped to any local Greyhound shipping office. I thought I'd have to rent a truck but all five boxes (each one is light enough for one person to manage) fitted into my SUV (Merc R350 for size comparison) with room to spare. The actual build probably took 2.5 hours, if I had to do it again I could manage it in around an hour...there's a fair bit of head scratching to do as the instructions aren't bad but you have to be EXTREMELY careful to put various pieces the right way around, particularly confusing was the back wheel assembly. The actual run is held together with what appears to be fairly flimsy plastic tabs,although after being up now for a month aren't showing any signs of ware. Everything else was relatively painless and soon the Cube was up and ready to receive the chicks.
Introducing the Chicks:
So, we have 6 (Chop, Suey, Nugget, Scramble, Patti and Licken) who, at the time were 6 weeks old. From day one they seemed to love their environment. For me, though, because they were pretty small, they weren't quite ready for all the wonderful functions that now are working so well:
Glug and Grub...these are two plastic containers that fit on to the sides of the run, one (glug) for water, one (grub) for food. They’re designed to hold decent amounts of food and water and were too high (even when set on the lowest part of the run) for the chicks to reach up and use them. This meant having to use traditional water jars and chick feeds, not really a problem, rather a bit of a pain since the run height is rather small and to get in to it you have to crouch down.
Ladder in to the Cube:
Again, the chicks were too small to jump up on to the first rung....cured by placing a couple of bricks to make it easier. Also, the space in between the rungs was a challenge for them for a couple of weeks...this caused the biggest pain, having to catch them and manually place them in the coop at bedtime....now, with the chicks aged 8 weeks, they zip up and down like pros as well as taking themselves off to bed each night!
Living with the Cube:
We absolutely love the set up, being able to wheel the thing around is probably the best thing about the Cube along with the ease of cleaning and maintenance. My wife was very worried about the potential chicken poo smells, very happy to report that as long as you empty the easy litter trays, we’re relatively chicken smell free....ah, happy days!
