Show me your chicken coops

[IShitGlitter]

I know there's a chicken section but it's quiet over that way.
Show me your coops, runs and how many chickens.
I need some inspiration.

No poultry currently as we're in between suitable houses but when we did we had a Jim Vyse ark. Fabulous quality. In fact the bespoke run he made has been taken apart and stored in my dad's garage ready for future feathered friends/Guinea Pigs.

We have an eglu cube with a standard 2m run and so no photo needed. We currently have five hens in there. Its 8 years old now and so looking the worse for wear. Its faded a lot and the wheel system is completely knackered and so it can't really be moved very easily any more.

Mine mainly free range apart from at this time of year when my vegetable seedlings have just popped up. We are overloaded with eggs already. I am making lot of quiches and cakes!

Coop painted a couple of weeks ago as I had red mite and it was looking a bit worn, so took it apart, pressure washed it, scrubbed it, pressure washed it again, repainted it, rebuilt and treated. Seem to have sorted the red mite issue thankfully.

Name changed as these will be very outing if you know me!

General area they are in.

@Chasingsquirrels have you ever tried the diatom slurry to prevent red mite?

You get some diatom powder and mix it with washing up liquid until it's a paste consistency. Then using a paint brush paint it all over your coop, inside and out. Particularly paint it into the corners and where the red mite congregate (little social distancing breaking bastatds).

It really does work. I never get red mite. But you need to reapply every 6 months or so - when you can see its washed off.

Just a few more 😬 Lovely girls and our cockerel as a baby.

madroid thanks.
Weirdly I've had chickens for over 10 years and never had red mite before. They started in the autumn and I thought I'd got on top of them, but with the warm weather they were back. I brushed the inside of the coop with diatom earth powder with a paintbrush all into the creavases etc, every couple of days for a week. Haven't seen any for a week or so now, so I'm hopeful that just the dry powder has worked, but I'll bear your tip in mind!

Don't waste your money on a wooden coop. We had one and within 18 months had rotted and was full of red mite despite very regular cleaning and spraying.

We've now got an Eglu cube and 8 chickens. The hens free range in an area of land during the day so only sleep in there at night so plenty of room.

Make sure any coop is very safe. A fox got into our garden yesterday and killed one of ours. It came back at night and tried to get into the coop but the Eglu was secure enough to keep it out.

Agree with Getting, dont buy a wooden coop, my first one was and it was a pain and did get mite even after lots of cleaning.

Now have a plastic coop (not Eglu) with a long 25 foot run, but the girls are all free range and use the run on a morning/night before bed with an automatic door opener.

These are lovely looking coops and runs gettingusedtothelimelight sorry to hear about that that's so sad and my No1 fear with starting out with chickens. Our coop is very safe it's a brick outhouse attacted to the house there's a big old strong door into it and inside its in 2 sections separated with a wooden high gate the chickens will be in that section behind the gate there's a window in there for ventilation one pane of glass is missing which am going to replace with fine mesh the window is high up so don't be drafty for the chickens. In the day they will be in a 5ft x 18ft run. It's on concrete and we are going to make it to look like a beach with sand.

Be prepared for the 'girls' to break your heart, I have a girl who is really not going to last long today, fine yesterday to day not, slowly getting weaker, I have done all i can for her, and she is comfortable and not alone

I cannot even get to a vets as they are all closed.