There’s no point in having a roof if it can’t withstand gales and, so far, we haven’t had a red mite infestation. On top of that, changing the roof would make little difference when our huts are made from salvage and are riddled with gaps, cracks, nooks and crannies where mites can hide.

Must dash, things to do.

nice hen house! Only thing I’d point out though, I wouldn’t recommend using felt as a roofing material under any circumstances, as it’s the ideal harbour for the dreaded Red Mite. When I first started keeping hens I didn’t know this; & we ended up having to burn our makeshift henhouse, things got so bad beneath the felt. And our first hens were Black Rocks, which are supposedly Red-Mite resistant. Perhaps it’s that much colder up North, you don’t have such serious problems with the little blighters?

I’d much more recommend something like Onduline - although with a mesh barrier on the inside to cover any exposed grooves, as otherwise vermin can infiltrate - in our ‘Fort Knox’ house we lost several goslings last year to goodness knows what, but it was small enough to squeeze in & bite the chicks’ heads off. Yuk.

And also thought to add that I think that, for memory, we made the modifications to the end of the hutch for a few reasons - 1) our chooks were ex-battery hens and didn’t have a lot of strength to jump up out of the hutch, so the end-opening allowed them to walk out instead, 2) We thought it would be easier to clean out the litter, because we could tip the hutch on its end and hose the bottom of the hutch, with all the litter falling out rather than having to be partially taken out by hand, 3) It has also had the added benefit of allowing us to easily put a sheet of corrugated iron over the top of the hutch when it rains, extending the chook’s undercover area without blocking off their entry to the hutch.

I think that this set up would be a plus, too, if you have quite young chickens that weren’t able to jump out easily to range.

Cheers!

The allow the chooks to walk in and out of the hutch as they wish, we cut the far wired end off, and attached a vertical metal track/retainer on either side of the opening. We then made a square wire ‘door’ (with the wire we cut away) that we can easily slide down into the track.. (kind of akin to a guillotine, though with the ‘door’ not attached to anything, if that makes it easier to picture!). Simply holding the ‘door’ in your hands, lining it up in the vertical metal track, and then pushing/sliding it down, encloses the hutch, keeping the chooks in and the predators out.

The beauty of using a rabbit hutch like this is that the entire thing is enclosed with wire (including the bottom, because rabbits can dig!) so there’s no possible way for foxes and other predators to get in. It’s also quite easy to clean - we just clear out any manure that’s gathered in it every morning (which we add to our liquid manure brews) and then hose it out with a watering can - with the water and any remaining dirt, manure, etc., falling through the mesh floor, allowing the hutch to dry out by the end of the day.

The hutch houses our three chooks quite comfortably. Due to its small size we wouldn’t put any more in it, tho we find that three chooks is more than sufficient for our needs (they lay, on average, 3 eggs per day).

The hutch is positioned in a small fenced-off area of the backyard, which allows us to open the hutch during the day and let the chooks out to range. At night time they independently go back in to the hutch and roost together, after which time we go out and slide in the door, and say goodnight!

My family got the hutch for free intially, so it has turned out to be quite an economical way of keeping chooks. We rent, too, so the convenience of being able to easily clean and move it has also been a plus.