Eglu Schmeglu!

A new house for the hennies!

Not being one to spend a whole month's mortgage payment on a hen house, we recently had to get a new one due to nasty infestation of red mite :(

The buggers invaded our little wooden house and cause the Warren hen to start ripping out her own feathers and become aggressive to the other hens.

We looked at lots of other designs, and husband, being the handy guy he is, said he could build a new ark. But with the red mite being so heavy, it would be likely that they would return - we had already tried the treating of them and even blowtorched the wooden house to scorch them.

And they still came back. Gits.

So plastic seemed the next choice.

Now, the Eglu, as lovely as it is, is bascially a lump of plastic. We already have a run and hens so it seemed pointless and frivoulous to spend a large amount of cash on one.

I scanned Freegle for days looking for old plastic Wendy houses etc, but nothing.

So I went to B & Q and bought a garden storage box. Here's what hubby did to it:

A hole was cut out of the side and an old kitchen vegetable scrap caddy door was used as the in/out flap, and the botton of the caddy was used with a coat hanger, as a feed trough. A broom shank for a perch and away you go!
Easy to clean - it hoses out great and is incredibly warm in there.

The hens love it. The brown Warren Monica's feathers are almost grown back, and all three are laying again. We treated them just before we put them all in the new house with powder, and watched satisfyingly, as the old hen house was committed to ashes in a mini bonfire :)