I Updated My Plans For Hen House Building

Well, in light of the fact that we’ve gotten all of 3 eggs in the last 3 weeks I decided to make some changes to my plans for hen house construction! Again! Seems like I’m never going to be done with this thing! LOL

We (my wife and I) have been trying to figure out why our hens haven’t been laying and although I really have a hard time with this story I’m pretty much willing to try whatever to get them back to laying eggs regularly.

Added Electric and a Light to My Plans for Hen House

Every where we look (books, internet, friends) it seems as though the change in daylight hours might be the culprit. Yesterday I took a close look at my coop and decided it might be a combination of a few different things all at once that’s causing a major change in the amount of daylight they are getting. For one thing, when I built the hen house, I built it around a small tree, I did my best not to disturb the tree too much and it really looks nice. But it’s been a few months now and the tree has been sprouting a lot of branches and leaves and when I look closely I realize that the coop is getting a lot more shade now than it used to be. So I trimmed it up a bit while I was out there. In addition, I decided to bite the bullet and add a light.

So now I’ve added the following items to my plans for hen house: 35 feet of Romex (2 wire plus ground wire all sheathed together), an electrical box (to mount the electrical outlet on), an electrical outlet (just used el cheapo basic bulb outlet), and a super efficient fluorescent light bulb (I used one of those corkscrew looking bulbs, it’s rated at 60 watts but only uses 13 watts of energy). Oh, and I almost forgot, I also used a cheap timer that I had purchased at Wal Mart for my pool pump.  Fortunately I had all of this stuff just laying around in my work shop. (yes, I’m a pack rat!) LOL   The wire was left over from the last time I added some lights in my back yard, I only needed about 35 feet or so but it was so much cheaper to buy in a 100 foot package that I went ahead and bought the extra. The fixture and box was actually mounted in my garage when I moved into my house but I added 8 foot fluorescent light fixtures not long after we moved in so we no longer used that old incandescent fixture. I disconnected it and relocated it to the coop. The timer was being used on my above ground pool but I started emptying it yesterday because it’s now too cold to swim. (Might as well quit paying for the chlorine and the electric that I’ve been using to keep it from turning green).

A couple of hours later the work was done, I set the timer and wandered off to do other things. 6:00 p.m. came and went and the timer never turned the lights on. Dang! What next? I went checking and found a breaker off, I reset it and moved on. Got up this morning and looked out and the hen house was still lit up! Dang it, the timer should have turned the light off at 11:00 p.m.. I guess 2 years outside by the pool was too much for this cheap timer, I’ll have to get another. This time I’ll have to drop the money, I don’t have any more laying around! It’s the kind with the dial you spin and set to the right time, then plug your light or whatever into it and then plug the whole thing into the outlet. I think I only paid about $6 or $8 for it when it was new.

Plans for hen house completed?

Hopefully my plans for hen house building are at a stand still. I personally have had just about enough of it. I do like taking on projects like that but after a while I’m done with it and want to move on to something different. I don’t like to have to keep revisiting the same project. And I’ll tell you, the girls (my hens) were not impressed that the light was on all night either. When I went out to turn it off they were roaming around in there and maybe it was my imagination but they looked a bit disgusted! LOL

Well, hopefully the little buggers will start laying again. It’s funny, eggs weren’t really the main reason we got chickens but now that we’ve gotten used to having fresh eggs coming in every day it’s annoying to not be getting them. It kind of sucks to have to buy feed and then buy eggs too! I’ll keep you posted on whether this light fixes my problem or not! And hopefully this blog will help you to make sure your plans for hen house building are more complete than mine were when I started out.

 

 

 

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