The base for the new summer hen house is now complete. And with that accomplishment, the birds are one step closer to greatly upgraded accommodation.
This hen house is built with a new design meant to correct several of the shortcomings of past shelters. In the summer, the birds need protection from the rain, hail, wind, and Sun. Accomplishing that takes nothing more than a tarp, which is the only shelter we give the meat birds.
Laying hens, however, have extra needs. Here, in Fairbanks, we have nearly 24-hour daylight for much of the summer. If the hens do not have a dark place to sleep, the extended daylight hours takes a toll on the egg production. Since our business depends on selling eggs, we try to limit the hens to 14 hours of light per day. To that end, the winter coop has artificial lighting on a timer to supplement the scarce sunlight in the winter months.
The current summer shelter attempts the opposite correction, giving them a relatively dark shaded area for about half of them to sleep in. During the day, they take turns using it for laying eggs. The new summer hen house has a 4’x8’ base, which is spacious enough that all the hens can fit inside at the same time.
In the interior of Alaska, wood decays very slowly if it stays dry and lasts for a remarkable length of time with only paint to protect it. With that in mind, I painted the entire frame with partial cans of paint that have been sitting around for too long.
The base coat was made with some blue from the eldest offspring’s bedroom, painted more than twenty years ago, yellow from a hallway painted even earlier, and a lime green paint that was too good to throw away when my school theater’s scene shop needed to clear shelf space.
The second coat coat was made with a dark green left over from some garden benches painted a mere decade ago. The dark color should help keep the interior of the hen shelter from reflecting stray light that gets in and I like to think the hens will find the color soothing as they settle onto the roost rack for the night.
I installed a roosting rack with 48’ of linear perching space so all the hens can sleep off the ground and have room to move around. The rack was designed so that the rails have no conspicuous difference in height in order to eliminate the competition for the highest perch that we see in the winter coop.
Cutting the front and back panels to fit around the roof joists took a bit of careful measuring and a great deal of adjustment with the jigsaw but it turned out well enough for a hen house. The main goal was to avoid unnecessary light penetration.
In the main image you can see gaps along the edges, but they should close up when I permanently affix the panels to the frame. Presently, they are held in place for fitting, but will be removed to leave the frame light enough for me to carry it to the pen, where the final assembly will take place.
I intentionally left a small gap along the very top for ventilation. Chickens leave 40% of their poop directly under their sleeping position so ease of airflow is a must for avoiding the ammonia smell and moisture buildup. Neither farmer nor chicken is pleased with those conditions.
The upper part of the front will eventually be fitted with a row of nesting boxes, but that feature can wait. The first necessity is to have the new hen house and pen finished before we run out of summer.
