Rural Gardening: Ok...I'm taking the Plunge, 0 by CountryGardens

CountryGardens wrote:
This site shows the next boxes we bought. We have the roll out model.
About 40 hens are using it with no fighting over space.
http://hoovershatchery.com/html/equip.html

On free range. What I gather, it is any way of housing where the hens are not confined in the little cages.
We are using an old double wide corn crib for our hen house. We partitioned off the center drive area for feeding & the nest area. It's about 12 x 12. A 12 ft length of the crib is where the roosts are. We have a white light in the feed area & a red one in the roost area. They both come on a 7 AM. The white light goes off about ½ hour before the red one. Most of the time all the hens end up on the roost. Before we did this, they would be in the nests all night & make a big mess.
This building is not heated or insulated. Fairly tight, though. Gets cold, but they seem to be doing OK. They are laying about 2 ½ dozen eggs a day. We don't know how old some are, so I think they are not old enough to lay yet. Every day we get a couple pullet eggs.
We also have an outside run. We let them out there on nice days.

Bernie

This message was edited Dec 10, 2008 7:39 PM