[Bionic]

My 5 girls are still housed at the moment but I intend to let them out into a small area soon.

It seems to me that now might be a good time to buy them a new house to move into so looking for any recommendations please.

[Womble]

A friend of ours had an Eglu Cube, and found it very practical. Having just checked, I am pleased to report that they are an absolute bargain at £750, including a small run  ( Ooops! - I honestly thought they were about a third of that!).

Still, if you can sell the eggs from your five hens, you should be able to re-coop  that cost within a couple of thousand years.

[chrismahon]

Not impressed with the practicalities of the Omlet Coops. They may be a fair design from an Engineering point of view, but I've heard far too many complaints. Green Frog has many recommendations but the August 2012 edition of Practical poultry had several issues, leaks and poor ventilation being two. But better for red mite and far less maintenance than wood.

[Foobar]

I was thinking about getting a plastic one when my homemade one falls apart - I was looking at the Solway Recycling ones, in particular the Smart Hen House or the Eco Ark.  I already have a pig ark by them, and although they aren't cheap, they are well made and very robust and will outlive anything made of wood.  I need to see them in person though, so was trying to find out what shows they would be displaying at this year.....

[Marches Farmer]

Beware of regurgitated plastic arks - we have one and, yes, it does last but .... it weighs a tonne (takes 3 robust adults to move it), the plastic sheets have an open texture inside the sheet (red mite Heaven) and the roof sheet began to delaminate after two Winters, permitting rain to seep through.  It now has a new roof and is used only as an overspill coop.  It also has only one door so you have to crawl inside to retrieve eggs.

[Foobar]

[member=27063]Marches Farmer[/member] was make was that out of interest?

[Eve]

6 Eglu Cubes and 9 Eglu Classics*, all secondhand from Ebay / Preloved / Gumtree inc several Cubes for about £200-250. Not perfect but worth their money for cleanliness alone.


*ok, one of them is orange and nicknamed the easyjet coop, but hey, it was cheap so we ignored the colour   

[Womble]

That's not bad Eve. When I checked Ebay completed listings, second hand cubes seemed to be selling for about £500.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Eglus in your opinion then? 

The 'classics' always remind me of vintage iMacs  .

[Bionic]

I looked at the Eglu cubes too and they seem to hold their price on ebay. Sounds as if you did well Eve.

[sss]

All mine are green frog, easy to clean and assemble

[TheSmilingSheep]

Well we are completely devoted to the plastic coops - never had a problem with red mite, and very easy to water hose down...
We use 'arkus' - we've had two pig arks from them, and have just invested in our second chicken coop (increasing the size of the flock!)
We've found them very easy to put together and/or dismantle - to be honest prefer the design to green frog and solway...
good luck

[Bionic]

Thank you all for your recommendations. After looking at everything I have just ordered an Arkus. It comes ready built so it should be simple for me to set up.


My girls are staying in the greenhouse until it arrives

[Celli]

When I was looking into getting a plastic coop it was Arkus that stood out ( to me ) as the best design, I was concerned about head height in a lot of them, they mostly looked like the hens head would be right in a draft when they were perching.
Heard a lot of bad things about Eglu, great design for the human, not so great for the hens.

[Anke]

I would have thought that rats can chew through (light?) plastic even faster than through sturdy wood....

[Marches Farmer]

When I was looking after my neighbour's hens while she was away I noticed that rats had gnawed a hole in the heavy duty plastic dustbin she uses for storing their feed - in a single night.  I can't remember which company supplied my henhouse - it's dark grey with flecks of other colours and made of boards about 1.5 cm thick.