Once you realize how fun and beneficial raising chickens can be, you make every effort to make the experience better for the chickens, and yourself!
Related Reading: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Raising Backyard Chickens
Treating your chicken-keeping-self with these chicken gadgets will make raising chickens more enjoyable, easier, and less stressful for you, leaving you more time to spend with your flock! And many of those tools can be used for your ducks or quail as well.
1. Water Fount Base Heater
We spent too many winters slogging through snow, ice and cold, with chicken water founts sloshing water all down our legs several times a day before we said enough is enough!
If you live in a cold region, you know how tough it is to rotate the chickens water several times per day as it freezes and thaws.
After several years without a water heater we eventually caved and bought one, and now we’ll never go back.
This gadget has been such a lifesaver, making winters so much more comfortable for me and my flock.
Water base heaters are a safe and easy way to make sure the chicken water fount never freezes over in winter. Without a base heater, it’s your responsibility to either break the ice forming in the water fount, or swap out the frozen fount for a fresh one several times per day.
This base heater saved my sanity, and the health of my chickens, when I no longer needed to worry constantly about their fresh water supply for the long winter.
2. Automatic Chicken Door
There’s nothing worse than rushing around the house in the morning, trying to get everyone ready and out the door, and THEN realizing you forgot to let the chickens out.
Or, even worse, the times when you’re away from home and unable to get the chickens back in to the coop before dark.
The daily grind of letting the chickens out and putting them back in adds a lot of stress and time to your routine.
The automatic chicken door is an absolute lifesaver in this respect. Never again do you have to feel guilty for letting the birds out late, or feel that rush of panic if you’re not home to put them to bed before the predators come lurking out of the dark.
The automatic chicken door does it all for you. This coop door has a light sensor that detects the time of day and opens and closes accordingly. This door can be the difference between a safe flock and one hunted by predators.
The automatic chicken coop door is easy to install, runs on simple AA batteries, and is completely adjustable to your needs. This company is well known for having excellent customer service and happy customers.
3. Goodnature Rat and Mouse Trap
If there’s one thing that every chicken keeper deals with at some point or another, it’s rodents.
Whether it’s rats, mice, or both that you’re dealing with at your homestead, it’s important to nip that problem in the bud before it literally reproduces.
It’s never a good idea to use poison to take care of a rodent problem when you have chickens.
Rodents that have been poisoned can die anywhere, and if one of your chickens eats that dead rodent, the chicken and your family are in deep trouble. Traps are the only quick and efficient way to solve rodent problems before they get out of hand.
When we were raising chickens in the city, we had a big problem with neighborhood rats sneaking into our chicken coop to steal chicken feed.
Now that we live in the country, we’ve been dealing with mice in the chicken coop. It seems there’s no end to coop visitors looking to snag free food.
We’ve tried every trap on the market, and while many of them did indeed work, they made for messy and unsightly cleanup. Until we found the Goodnature mouse and rat trap.
This trap is extraordinary in that it automatically re-sets itself every time it kills a rodent, so it can take care of many rodents in one night without any intervention from you. It’s truly a set it and forget it trap.
The trap kills the rodents with a blast of Co2, instead of blunt force, so there’s no mangled mess to clean up. The best part is, this trap kills rodents without poison or toxins, so the dead rodents can be eaten by wildlife or disposed of without any harm to the environment.
Although this trap is an investment, we’ve found it to be our dream solution for taking care of rodent problems. As an added bonus, the company is wonderful to work with! They’ll help with troubleshooting anytime.
4. Electric Poultry Netting
One of the toughest things about raising chickens is the constant battle between wanting your chickens to free range outside to enjoy all the sunshiney, buggy perks of freedom, and wanting to protect those babies from predators.
Who says you can’t do both?
Setting up a chicken tractor or fenced area with electric poultry netting will give you and your flock the best of both worlds. They can hunt, forage, fly, and run. You can rest easy knowing they’re protected from lurking hungry predators.
Poultry netting is not a guarantee against attacks, but it certainly helps to protect your birds. It’s moveable, so you can set it up in different pastures on different days, and takes very little energy to set up.
Your chickens will thank you for their freedom and protection.
5. Roll out nesting boxes
Now this is the ultimate chicken coop luxury item.
Your chickens enter the nesting box to do their little reproductive miracle, and the eggs roll right out into a convenient tray for you to collect!
No more issues with eggs getting pooped on, broken, or sat on for days by a broody hen.
These nesting boxes have the ultimate perfect design, they’re made of metal, which is mite proof, and the roof is slanted, which will keep your chickens from trying to roost on top of it. It even has curtains for chicken privacy and a removable nesting pad which can be cleaned.
If you’re struggling with dirty eggs or egg eaters in your flock, this nesting box is a must have.
6. Incubator
The ultimate fun chicken gadget on our list, the incubator!
Once you’ve been raising chickens for a while, the itch to hatch your own chicks from your flock favorites hits hard.
Hatching chicks with an incubator is fun, exciting, and educational all at once. You can teach the kids about reproduction and the life cycle while adding some fluffy new babies to your flock!
This incubator is consistently rated as one of the best and most affordable on the market for home hatchers. It’s fully automatic, which means you don’t have to take the time to handle humidity or temperature regulation, or even egg turning.
This incubator also has see through sides, so when hatch day arrives, you’ll get quite a show!
7. Brinsea Ecoglow Safety Brooder
The Ecoglow is the ultimate in home chick brooding.
Using a heat lamp to brood your chicks is all well and good, as long as you hook it up safely. Heat lamps are notorious for causing fires and burning out, leaving your tiny flock at risk.
The Ecoglow, however, provides completely safe, consistent heat to your chicks, so you don’t have to worry.
This contraption radiates heat from the underside. Chicks can gather underneath the heater when they’re cold, and wander out from under it when they get too warm.
The Ecoglow acts exactly as a broody mother would, allowing the chicks to regulate their own temperature and get warm when they feel the need. Heat lamps can do much the same, but not as effectively, as they tend to warm a large area without leaving much space for cooler zones.
The Ecoglow is also beneficial for chicks because it doesn’t use a light for heat. This allows the chicks to sleep better, and gets them naturally attuned to daylight right off the bat. This improves the health and happiness of your chicks.
Of course, now that you’re outfitted with the best chicken gadgets, it’s time to talk about the handiest garden tools you didn’t know you needed.
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