Household objects that work surprisingly well in chicken coops

A chicken coop doesn't need very much for the chickens to be happy. Some windows, a few nest boxes, perches and a place for their food & water and they will be perfectly content! However, adding some decorations or storage can make the coop more useable for you. Over the years I've repurposed a bunch of different household items to my chicken coops.

Shopping cart used in chicken coop

Many of them are for decoration like pictures, some are functional like lights but I also put several items in the coop for storage or organization. It's nice to be able to use previously unused space like wall space to store things and keep them within reach for when I'm tending the chickens!

It's also a good way to get a little bit more use out of things that might not be ready for the landfill just yet...

Funny chicken coop names

I may have several chicken coops but not all of them have names. Why, you ask? Well, I couldn't find anything that fit for 2 of them! So they shall remain nameless until I decide on something I think is fun enough to say everyday and fits the esthetic of said coop. I mean, naming your chicken coop should be as fun as raising chickens themselves!


Chicken coop with a funny name sign hanging on the outside

While looking for a chuckle-inducing name for 2 of my coops I've come across a LOT of comical coop name ideas so I decided to pass them on to you! From clever wordplay to witty references, these coop monikers will make your chickens cluck with laughter. Of course some of the more punny names can be a little ridiculous, but that's part of the fun!

Related reading: Funny Chicken Jokes.

Do your roosters need their own pen?

Anybody that has raised a mixed flock of chickens will tell you that the roosters can be quite a problem for the hens some times! It's kind of an art to get your ratio of roosters to hens just perfect. Too many roosters and they're rough on the hens & they fight, but too few roosters and not all the eggs will be fertilized.

extra roosters in a bachelor pen to keep them from fighting

If you're hatching or buying straight run chicks you can easily end up with too many roosters. Straight run is supposed to be exactly how the chicks hatch, which is usually pretty close to 50/50 ratio. You will most likely end up with more roosters than you'd like. 

Chickens that lay white eggs

A few years back I was helping Brinsea incubators with their displays and demonstrations at the Mother Earth News fair when it was in Pennsylvania. I had the eggs all ready to hatch but the one problem was that most of them were brown! When demonstrating candling eggs and incubation equipment you can see inside the egg most easily if it's white or cream colored. The darker the shell the harder it is to see inside.

White eggs, breeds that raise them

I had brown and white partially incubated eggs with me, but the white ones were from the silkies, so they were rather small white eggs since silkies are bantam sized. This sent me on a quest to find a standard sized white egg laying breed. I found several! 

Lots of people that raise chickens for eggs like to pick and choose their chicken breeds so that they have different colored eggs. It's often referred to as 'a pretty egg basket' or 'a rainbow egg basket'. 

Chicken eggs come in many colors the most common are blue, green, brown and white. Admittedly, most people are only familiar with white and brown eggs and many people don't even realize you can own chickens that lay white eggs! 

I was once told that only egg farms are allowed to have them. lol I should probably add that to the post I wrote about things non chicken keepers believe...but for now lets move on to the white egg layers!

There are several breeds that lay white eggs and they are all readily available from hatcheries and private breeders alike. Just like brown eggs come in various shades though, white eggs come in both pure white and off white or cream colored. 

How to hatch duck eggs

Ducklings are one of the cutest baby animals in existence! I have been raising ducks since 2009 and have had both standard size, large and bantamn ducks! I started hatching duck eggs as soon as I got my first incubator. Actually my first duck was a pekin egg that was added into my marans eggs shipment as a surprise extra egg. I named him Quackers!

incubated duck eggs with baby duckling

The first time I incubated duck eggs I just popped the eggs in my incubator along with the chicken eggs and used all the same settings as I do for chicks. It worked and he hatched, but I would quickly find out that I needed to change a few things to have every hatch go perfectly.

Other than the longer incubation period, duck eggs and chicken eggs are quite similar in incubation procedure. With a few tweaks though, I started to get a better hatch rate and I was hooked on hatching my own ducklings.

Of course the easiest method is always to have a hen hatch the eggs if you have a broody hen. Either a chicken hen or duck hen will work, they both can hatch duck eggs just fine. It gets a little funny when the baby ducks try to swim in the water container though as chickens don't understand that behavior!

If you don't have a broody hen though, you'll have to chose and use an incubator.