Vertical Farming or Chicken Gymnasium?

Understood. I think full sized laying hens might have more of a problem in your system. I cannot imagine that chicken poo from my full sized hens with full sized chicken poo would not cause a problem with your vertical system.
Probably so. The poop assimilation is somewhat governed by the feed rate. The bantams get nothing close to one-quarter lb/bird/day. Maybe half that. As noted above, a genuine test would be a dozen full size eggers in the 64 square feet of ground space or 184 square feet of walking surface..

The trouble is, I'm trying to thin the chicken herd right now and the last thing I want is to add a dozen full size eggers demanding another three pounds of feed per day, If I had someplace to move the bantams to then I could put in a colony of fifteen cemani...... Hmmm......... Actually, I might just switch them and try that. Thank you for the inspiration to get back to the whole vertical chicken thing.
 
We have over a dozen small pens of various shapes and sizes and this is our favorite. It's probably the chickens' favorite too.

There was a problem with a rat chewing holes in the plastic mesh. I had to patch several holes before we caught him. We should have used metal wire.

We've been getting rid of all the large fowl and focusing on Old English Game Bantams. They are athletic anyway and make good use of the vertical spaces.

On two occasions we have had hens who decided to nest on an upper platform instead of using the nesting box at ground level. I don't know what would happen to the chicks if they were allowed to hatch up there so I collect the eggs and move them to an incubator.
Great thanks đź‘Ť
Sounds like that's our way then. Now we have a couple of weeks to build it,...
We're looking forward to our first batch of self raised chicken in spring... Whenever any hen decides to go broody... "Still waiting
 
Two thoughts:

What predators do you have on Oahu besides mongoose?, and are mongoose able to climb? I would be worried about the plastic netting being enough to keep predators out,
especiay since you have already observed rats chewing through it.

Regarding the plastic netting, I have been considering it as an alternative to wire fencing for an enclosure my chickens would be in only in the daytime (in the winter), so less concern about predators. How does it hold up to sunliight and other wear and tear?
 

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