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OK so what is this about rocks on the top of the chicken house?

Simple - where we live is fairly exposed to wild weather of the north of Scotland. Caithness experiences winds of 60 - 80 mph on a regular basis especially during winter. So the rocks (there is now more on the roof) are to make sure that our chicken house does not blow over. It has withstood at least 2 gales with gusts of up to 70 mph.

If you plan to keep chickens you probably will not be in such an exposed situation, so rocks are "optional" and not something that "All" chicken houses need.

Newly arrived Chickens

When chickens are bought as pullets or point of lay they are just young birds of around 16 weeks. When they arrive the books advice is that you keep them in their chicken house for a couple of days so that they settle down after their journey, often by transport truck, and being handled by people often by persons with little or not experience of handling chicken (i.e. ourselves in this case).

It also helps them realise that they have a new home and that is where they are meant to be at night. Many birds will arrive without having seen perching bars or even daylight as they may have been raised in a barn without access to the outdoors. So it is all a bit strange to them and they need time to settle.

Our birds arrived after 6 or more hours being transported and we were both impressed at how calm they all were. They settled down quickly and most of them started to roost on the roosting bars I had put in. These are wooden posts 50mm wide (2 inches) and curved on all sides. The gentle curve is to allow the chickens to sit comfortably and grasp the roosting poles. I had shaved off the square corners of the wood and then sandpapered it down to be smooth and free of splinters. I did this to all 4 corners so that it did not matter what way up they were placed after being taken out and cleaned every so often.

The books also recommend that you gently place each bird onto the roosting bar so that they get the idea that is where they are meant to sit / sleep. We made a slight mistake and allowed the birds into the rear area of the chicken house which is designed for the chickens to lay their eggs - three of our birds started to sleep in the communal nesting box (designed for 3 birds at a time to lay eggs) and this meant that they have got into a "bad habit", the only real issue is that the nesting box gets a little dirty at one end where the birds sleep. If I had known I would have shut this area of the chicken house off until all the birds had got it into their heads that they had to roost on the two bars provided for this. If we decide to expand our flock then I will remember to keep the nesting boxed blocked off for a couple of weeks while the chickens settle in.

This was the first time I had ever built anything using timber and my wife was impressed that for someone who used any excuse not to do things around the house that I successfully planned, designed and built our first chicken house - with a little bit of advice from the local farm and building suppliers - Allans of Gillock, especially from Pearl who showed two greenhorns a lot of patience. I suspect that they are still amazed that our chicken house is still standing!

Chickens out in the snow in Febuary. They certainly did not like the snow at first. They appear to have got used to it.