I am a chickenkeeper! and omlet cube owner!

[dancingonthelilypads]

My cube arrived on Thursday with my two Miss Pepperpots and two Gingernut Rangers happily settling in!
I am so excited! I went with the Eglu cube for ease of cleaning mostly. Love the look of a wooden henhouse with little heart windows etc, but practicality has won in the end. I have enough children and so on (!) to need to choose the easier option sometimes.
Anyway, I am sooo impressed with both the cube and the chickens. It looks so much nicer in the garden than in pictures. Even my dh said 'ah I see where all that money went now. It really is a Rolls Royce chicken house!' It's great!
The chickens - again, I ordered with Omlet as a sensible option, due to them bringing and setting it all up for you if you order your chickens from them. I kind of thought that they were gonna be a really boring kind of bird, quite unimpressive. But they're great! Beautiful healthy looking hens who are very confident while being surrounded by several squealing children and an over excited puppy!
Am also looking forward to adding to the numbers in time though with a couple of pretty silkies or somesuch thing locally. Suggestions welcome of course!
Oh Omlet man who set up cube very good too. Answered all the questions we all threw at him excitedly over the hour or so he was here! Put up with us all very well, with a smile!! Assured us Omlet are always there if you ever have any questions or queries. Good service I'd say all round!
One thing -I have the cube with 3m run, apparently perfectly capable of having 10 chickens in there. I can't imagine ever having 10 chickens in what I see to be such a small space. With 4 in there at the moment I can see that a couple more fitting in perfectly, but another 6? What do you all think? I will be letting them free range during the day, when at home, but this may not always be very long some days. Any difference? Omlet say 10 is absolutely fine - is it?

I think 10 would be pushing it in a 3m run. We have one about that size which is supposedly ok for 6-8 chickens but I think 6 is the maximum really, we only have 4 in there at the mo and they haven't got masses of room, I try to let them free range as much as poss cos I feel a bit sorry for them stuck in their run.

dont know anything about chickens....but it sounds lovely

i have looked at the omlet rabbit houses... so i know the cage you mean

I think commercially sold runs are always too small for the number of birds stated. Whereas the house size is usually fine. So you could perhaps extend the run by building something onto it?

Introducing a couple of new hens should be fine - usually best to put the new girls in at night when they're settled. Getting birds that are roughly the same size is advisable, but not essential, to avoid any bullying.

Enjoy your new chickens! Are they due to start laying eggs soon?

I agree that houses are always described as being for more chickens than is wise. If they don't have enough room then they can start bullying or feather pulling etc, which isn't nice.

I would be careful about adding silkies - they can get bullied I think, as they are smaller - the pepperpots can be quite mean (I think they are the same sort of cross as Black Rocks and BOvan Neras, and they are definitely feisty, but lovely birds). Why not see if you can get a couple that lay different coloured eggs - maybe a White Star for white eggs and a Speckeldy for darker eggs?

Or the one I REALLY want to get which is a Fenton Blue, and lays blue eggs!

Thanks girls for all your help. Tortoiseshell-love the idea of the different coloured eggs! Very elegant*will look into it.
Debbie-thanks I agree.
DofNBride-Thanks. Am thinking of adding another metre of run anyway. Easily done! They are 18/19 weeks old so not too long to wait for the eggs all being well.
Chocolatespiders-what a fab name and a great reply!you really made me smile! Are you thinking about gettng a rabbit eglu? From my memories of cleaning out a rabbit hutch the eglu option seems much more appealing! Pricey-but what a palace for your rabbit!

I have a blackrock and a silkie together and they are best of friends. They're not that much smaller, they do tend to get very muddy/wet though.

congratulations on getting your cube. i have one and its fantastic, its so easy to keep clean. try making another set of roosting bars, i leave mine out for a bit before cleaning as it softens the mess. i bought mine without a run as i made my own which is almost four times the size of the omlet extended 3m run and i have 10 chooks in there. i could easily fit loads more in.
You could make an extension yourself or see if anybody on the omlet forum has some runs for sale, loads of them have been building their own runs. if you are not already a member its a great forum.

Thanks Mellie, will head over to Omlet later!
Was thinking about the roosting bars too- an extra set would be great!

hi dancing, im a new cube owner too. we have 3 each of the pepperpots and the gingernut rangers... the PP's are the bullies of the group i think... id have more of the GNRs over them anyday. but theyre all v nice to us and we've just started getting eggs too, so theyre useful and everything

i though tthe cube looked pretty small at first too but im fairly sure all 6 hens sleep in the nesting box part on top of each other atm so i guess theres room for a few more. agree with norks; if theyre in the run a fair bit, its the run you want to have space in.

Hi nappies, I agree that the Miss Pepperpots are in charge, in that they do nudge the other two along a bit. They're also last to bed and first out in the morning! How old are yours? Are you actually going to get more?
By the way, just as I finished raving about the cube, i went out and we moved it- crikey they do make a great mess of the grass don't they!- and one of the wheels fell right off! Good old Omlet, true to their word promptly sent me out replacement wheel units. Only thing is that I now need to get around to replacing them! Have moved it once more while waiting for the wheels to arrive and it took three of us to struggle it along the garden a bit. It's a darn heavy lump!