So, you’ve selected the chicken breeds you’d like to raise and now want to create a healthy, happy and productive environment with the best chicken coop accessories for your ladies? Welcome to the right place!
Here, we shall show you only the right products to keep your chooks happy. Regardless of what your chicken coop currently looks like or what your end purpose in chicken-keeping might be, some accessories are available that can enhance your chicken-keeping experience, making it as easy and fun as possible, while keeping your beloved brood safe and healthy.
Table of Contents
Best Chicken Coop Accessories
Basic Accessories
The basic accessories features essential coop materials, from keeping your chickens well-fed to hydrating and providing them with enough sleeping and egg-laying locations in their comfortable home. Before you begin thinking about fancier add-ons, ensure you incorporate these beginner fundamental enhancements into your flock’s coop.
Nest Box
Since hens need secluded places to lay their eggs, nest boxes, complete with clean, dry bedding, are a required feature of most chicken coops. We advise that you place the nest box(es) in darker parts of the coop to encourage its usage. Plus, it’s best to have a good amount of nest boxes accessible.
Roosting Bars
A large share of chicken variety (or breed) roost, or perch, to sleep at night and to make your chicken even more comfortable, you should provide roosting bars for your birds to perch on throughout the night. It’s a great idea to add at least 1 bar per bird (or a bar long enough for many birds to perch on).
Note: Ensure the edges on the bar top surfaces are smoothened to avoid potential foot discomfort.
Waterer
Being one of the top best chicken coop accessories, the chicken’s water should be clean and fresh water is always accessible for your flock at all times to avoid problems with egg production and growth to keep your birds healthy.
Waterers come in an assortment of designs and types, such as ball-type drinkers and fountain-type drinkers that can be hooked up a low-pressure water line.
The rule of thumb is to put in more waterers than you think you’ll need. This helps accommodate shy chickens and allows for the availability of fresh water in the event of a malfunction or a spill.
Feeder
Food is another important ingredient for a healthy thriving flock, and like waterers, feeders are made in a variety of designs, including bucket feeders that can store a few days’ worths of feed an feeders that can be hung from the coop ceiling.
Floor feeders should have a lip deep enough to reduce feed spillage onto the coop floor. If there is excess food, it should be stored properly. Plus, ensure you store unused feed in closed containers, such as Rubbermaid bins or covered plastic herbage containers.
Heater and Thermometer
If you plan to raise and hatch chicks; a brooder thermometer and heating element are absolute necessities. Because chicks cannot generate enough energy to keep themselves warm (this is why mothers cover the chicks with their bodies), a heating element, like a heat lamp, is vital to their survival.
A brooder thermometer also allows you to monitor the exact temperature of the chick’s habitat, lowering or raising the heat as needed.
Comfy Accessories
This category of best chicken coop accessories is for the chicken keeper who desires to splurge a little on their coop for extra safety or ease of care. None of these add-ons are needed for a healthy and productive flock, however, they could make tending to your poultry much easier.
Waterer Upgrade (Heated and/or Continuous Flow)
Aside the use of the basic waterers stated above, extra designs can make providing water for your brood much easier. A waterer with a heated base will prevent the water from freezing on cold nights and days, as will a continuous-flow design that also keeps the water from becoming stagnant.
Wheels
The size of your coop might allow you to attach wheels to the frame and move it around the yard. The result of their scratching and picking at the soil in search of plant materials and bugs to eat causes the ground under their feet to aerate while fertilizing it with their droppings.
By moving the crop around your property, you can spread these benefits across your whole land area, reducing potential destruction to your grass.
Electric Fencing
If your chickens are free-range, electric fencing is a great way of keeping your birds contained while protecting them from predators. In some cases, electric fences for chooks discourage raccoons from breaking-in.
Fencing with electricity can be done in a couple of ways, including a simple 1-2 wire system, hot wires added to existing fencing or electrified poultry netting.
Security Motion Sensor Lights
For more determined predators, you’d need more than the right fencing to keep your prized and loved chickens safe and secure. You should also consider placing motion security lights around your chicken pen to use at night to deter unwanted intrusions from other animals and alert you to the fact that there are predators in the yard.
Edible Plants
With edible plants such as watermelon, lettuce, spinach, cantaloupe, and comfrey (which Frame notes is a particular favorite of many birds), your birds diet are varied while still providing them with extra nutrient sources.
Where possible, discourage the consumption of grass because grass clippings are difficult to digest and may result in severe impaction plus humans are fond of treating grass with insecticides and herbicides.
Boredom Busters
To offer a little variety in your flock’s diet while keeping them busy, you should either buy or make an edible block treat. These treats often contain a list of ingredients, including various meals and grains along with some vital grit to aid with digestion.
As your roosters and hens break apart the block treats little by little, their natural pecking and scratching instincts are encouraged by the treats, keeping them healthy and entertained all at once.
Chooks love to scratch and pick at alfalfa, especially in the winter.
Toys
Did you know that too many hens in the coop is trouble?
To keep them entertained and happy, invest in some toys to distract them and prevent them from messing with others. Consider items that are shiny and small enough for them to peck at.
Upscale Accessories
These add-ons features some of the best chicken coop accessories for chicken keepers who want to take their coop to the ultimate level of barn cooping, and they range from gadgets designed to protect and help and watch over a flock to decorations and embellishments aimed at beautifying coops from bottom up.
Coop Décor
Chicken coops need not be functional only; they can also add to your farm’s general style with keeping your flock sound and safe.
Ideas include stylish wall hooks which can be used to hold feed scoops and egg buckets, galvanized lidded buckets to store extra feed etc.
We recommend meeting your chicken’s basic needs before adding decoration, but, even basic can be fancy!
Green Roof
To completely maximize the space that your chicken coop uses up, consider building a coop with a green roof. With a little additional construction, you can grow plans right on top of your chicken’s cozy home. It does need extra planning to ensure that the coop can hold the plant and soil weight, as well as a waterproofing membrane to keep moisture from sinking into the structure itself. Incorporating a slight slant to the coop’s green roof (or any coop roof) also allows you to collect rainwater in a rain barrel to help with your flock’s water needs or water plants around the farm.
Automatic Door Closer
For chickens who free-range, installing an automatic coop-door closer will allow locking your chickens in the coop at night a cinch.
These coop doors are set on a timer to open in the morning so your flock can move out to roam and subsequently close at night to keep the birds locked in the coop. Despite their ease of use, Barncoop advises chicken keepers to perform frequent checks to ensure that the door closer is working properly.
Automatic door closers need constant monitoring to make sure they don’t close birds out if they malfunction.
Solar-powered LED Light
If you have a long-standing issue with predators, like foxes, coyotes, raccoons, encroaching on your chicken coop at night, consider a solar-powered LED light to help keep your flock safe. These lights gather power during the day and flash a small red light from dusk until dawn, which predators see is a threat, causing them to keep their distance from the coop.
Video Camera
To have eyes inside the coop to watch your flock and activities going on, you should install a video camera inside the coop for the inside scoop on your chicken’s behavior.
This can quickly become entertaining and informative too. This is one of the few best chicken coop accessories that helps you understand rodent and other vermin issues.