Talk to me about chicken houses - Eglus, arks etc

[BadGardener]

So..... I'm thinking of getting a few chickens (say 3 to start with). We have a smallish, though not tiny garden with a fair bit of lawn and some borders, plus raised beds for veg which are netted off anyway.

I am thinking something that you can move around onto different patches of grass, rather than a fixed house & run, would work best.
So, if you have an Eglu, would you recommend it? Is it worth the money? Are they much easier to clean than wooden arks?

Is there anything I should look for in particular if I decide to go for a wooden one? (If I was richer I would get this Forsham one.) Are the higher priced ones worth it? Are they really heavy to move around?

....or any other advice!
Thanks!

Hello,

We have the Eglu. It is fantastic, so easy to clean and really simple design that works. We give it a quick clean once a week that takes about 45 mins and a thorough clean every month or so that takes a bit longer as the plastic needs to dry out.

One thing to point out though; We tried originally to move it around the garden and we have quite a lot of space but we found that the grass was not recovering as quickly as we would have liked so at any one time we had a couple of bare/barer patches and the space the Eglu was on that could not be used. After trying this for about 6 months we gave up and made a permanent bed for it to sit on. We use wood bark underneath and this is replaced every 4/5 months depending on its state.

We let the hens out for a couple of hours a day in the winter and longer in the summer.

Even if your veggies are netted you might want to make something a little more robust. I came home one day to find that they had got into my strawberry patch and dug it to pieces. They love the smell of tomato plants as well and will do anything to get at them.

3 is a good number. It keeps our family of 3 in eggs and allows us to give some away to the neighbours.

They also make really great pets and are great fun for children to help with.

I cannot comment on the wooden houses as I have never had one (although my parents do) but I do not regret getting the Eglu and love the way it brightens up the garden.

Thanks Allstarprincess, that's really helpful.
45 mins was longer than I was expecting it to take to clean, though! (I'm trying to work out exactly what I'm getting into here.)
I could probably fence off my veggies more permanently without too much trouble.

We have got the Forsham Boughton ark (902a) and have never had an eglu.

No chickens here yet, waiting till spring - but i can tell you it is very heavy to move especially if there's just one of you! The one you linked to will be fine though.

The eglu sounds good for cleaning purposes. I'm not sure why we went for the Forsham apart from it's bigger and was ex display so on offer.

Try and find a second hand eglu maybe, but deffo avoid anything with roofing felt as it harbours red mite.

The Forsham ones are so elegant.
There do seem to be a few second hand Eglus about but for not much less than the new ones, so it would have to be a lot easier to clean than a basic wooden one to justify the cost.