Urban Chicken Coops

From Urbanchicken

Eglu

Probably the most well known of coops aimed at the urban chicken keeper is omlet's eglu. The eglu is a coop with an integrated run. The eglu is easy to look after and clean and is suitable for two medium chickens or four small chickens.

So far there have been two versions of the eglu the Mark1 and Mark2, the Mark2 being larger than the Mark1. There is now a bit of a market in second hand eglus on ebay. So if you start with a small flock of chickens and decide to get more you can sell your eglu (or buy another)! There is also now the eglu cube which is quite a bit larger than the normal eglu's for those intending to keep a larger flock.

The elgu is sold as a fox proof coop, which it more or less has turned out to be with the odd exception.

Traditional Wooden Housing

Timber housing can take on many shapes and sizes to suit all surroundings: urban, country gardens, orchards, farmsteads or contemporary clean lined modern gardens. These can range from a Standard square unit with a sloping (Pent) roof to a beautiful cottage style house with a small inviting ramp and sliding ventilation windows or a large commercial sized house with hinged perching systems and numerous nesting boxes and slatted floors.

Information on how to choose a chicken house might be useful reading if you are stuggling to decide on a coop.

There are raised houses with runs attached - these are particularly useful when requiring extra shelter areas for the birds and also for placing feeders out of the wet weather. Being a natural product, wooden poultry housing is an attractive addition to many gardens and can enhance the natural surroundings in a way that some materials cannot. Traditional wooden arks are also still popular today and offer an easy to move solution to giving your birds fresh scratching ground on a regular basis.

There are a number of methods of poultry keeping:- such as 1. Housing unit within a fixed post and wire pen. 2. Housing unit within the garden, orchard or field area with complete free range. 3. Housing unit with run attached (like a traditional ark) whereby the birds can be moved regularly along to fresh ground but remain enclosed within the fixed run area. 4. Housing unit surrounded by a moveable electric poultry netting pen.

The method chosen by the keeper is often dictated by the amount of space available for the hens. This should also be a deciding factor on how many birds are kept.

Converted Shed

You can convert an ordinary garden shed into a coop by adding a pophole, nestboxes and perches. They can then either be free range from the building or you can build a run on the end or surround the shed with a post and wire fence or electric poultry netting.