Chicken Houses

[Delila]

I was driving by a farm yesterday and I saw about 50 little tin houses close to the ground. The houses looked like roofs. Chickens were running free so I assume they are chicken houses. But I thought a chicken house was like a house with one large room and they laid in nests.

[Ice Wolf]

In the old days, chickens would go into their house to roost at night, or to lay eggs if they had their own nests there. I used to help my mum with her backyard chicken run, many many moons ago.

Now, with battery farming *shudder*, everyone thinks it's normal to have a whole lot of chickens crammed together. It ain't a house as much as it's Room 101.

I way prefer free-range when I buy eggs. Costly, but ethical.

[Wyvern]

I agree with Ice Wolf. The tin "roofs" you saw were part of a chicken farm. Since the demand of chicken meat and eggs is great, these creatures are turned into meat making "machines" that are packed into those buildings tighter than a Japanese Subway during rush-hour.

I grew up in rual Louisiana and my grandfather had a chicken run - a fenced in area where the chickens roamed around. They also had a coop, which was a room about 8feet by 15feet and had several nesting boxes and a wide ladder-like thing that the birds could roost on. Funny thing was that he also had some ducks mixed in, the chickens would use the nesting boxes or build a nest on the floor of the coop, but the ducks liked to nest outside. Go figure.

[bare]

I'd be willing to bet that if you look more closely, the chickens were tethered at the ankle, one to each house. I believe what you were seeing are fighting cocks. Fighting cocks are illegal in many if not all states, but aficionado’s still raise them and probably fight them clandestinely.

They are kept in individual shelters for obvious reasons, they like to fight.

[Duck Duck Goose]

Delila, what part of the country was this in? Arkansas, Maryland, in other words a mild-winter part of the country? And, are you talking about little bitty doll-sized tin-roofed houses close to the ground, or huge people-size buildings, what I would call "pole barns"? If they were huge buildings, they were a chicken farm, what Wyvern is talking about.

But if they were little bitty doll-sized houses, my 98% WAG is that it was a turkey farm. Were they chickens, or turkeys? You can tell chickens from turkeys, because if you're looking at a bird and saying, "Wow, that's the biggest chicken I ever saw!" it's a turkey.

If they were chickens, then it was some kind of specialty "organic eggs" or "hormone-free" small-time operation. Modern chicken farms, serious ones, don't keep a hundred or so laying hens running loose in a pasture--they have 40,000 hens in little cages in big pole barns.

What color were the birds? Were the birds all the same color scheme, were they all white, or were some of them different colors? Fighting cocks are all different colors; a flock of laying hens of whatever breed will all be the same color, either red or black or black and white.

Also, there's the possibility that you were looking at hog shelters, and the chickens just happened to be there. Did they look tall enough for a pig to crawl under?

[Duck Duck Goose]

Or were they little teepees? I found this on raising fighting cocks.

http://enquirer.com/columns/pulfer/1997/04/041597_lp.html
Behind the Webbs' pale blue ranch-style house is a tidy barn and dozens of little teepees, each with a single occupant. An adult rooster. Some of the most beautiful birds I've ever seen perched on the roofs of A-frame huts. Each one was tethered with a six-foot bungee cord.

Does this sound like what you saw, or were the chickens just sort of wandering around?