Farming is rarely described as chic, but if one aspect of it ever was of late, tending to a flock of backyard chickens might be it. I happen to be one of those cluckin’ trendsetters, as the tender to a diverse flock of five hens that live in the backyard of my suburban Phoenix-area home.
You’d be surprised how quickly those feathered females grow on you. When that happens, you begin to pay attention to new things, like pricing on freeze-dried mealworms and whether a coyote can scale a 6-foot fence. Safety, comfort, and integrity take priority when it comes to chicken coops, and the Eglu Pro—the newest chicken coop offered by UK-based pet product company Omlet—promised all of it.
Not only is the Eglu Pro designed to keep predators at bay, but it allows for ergonomic accessibility with a ladder that went through 146 prototypes, and—most intriguing—its plastic, smooth-surface construction was supposed to be easy to clean. It was also built to last a “long, long time,” according to Omlet.
With the help of my five hens, I tested the coop to find that Omlet wasn’t joking.
Assembly Is a Group Project
The Eglu Pro is Omlet’s extra-large chicken coop, designed for up to 10 large hens. Our flock, which consists of four large hens and one smaller one, recently endured the hottest summer on record in Phoenix, as the city saw 70 days of temperatures of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Rain was all but nonexistent.
It’s fair to say we had hot chicks.
The coop they had always lived in was shingled on top and built with wood, had a metal droppings tray that would slide out, and featured a common area where they could both lounge and lay eggs. The only ventilation came by opening the back egg door and, since wood weathers, sometimes the coop’s exterior locks didn’t line up correctly or the droppings tray wouldn’t slide in easily.
Moira, Heihei, Mabel, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Dolly Parton were living in a bit of a shanty, if we’re being honest. They were able to test the Eglu Pro for about four weeks, beginning with the day after we assembled it.
When the coop’s 10 boxes arrived in two shipments on my doorstep, I was instantly smitten with the label design, which might sound insignificant. The cartoonish “Start with me, then find B” tag on the first box, coupled with the large labeling on every other box, fueled my optimism about assembly.
So I started on my own, giving a brief pause to the manual’s first page, which suggested a need for “stamina” and “patience” and a pizza party with friends to get this whole thing put together. Undaunted, I opened boxes A and B to learn, when my husband and two kids arrived, that I had used the wrong screws and would not need box B until later in the process.
The whole “Start with me, then find B” was just a cute rhyme, not actual instructions. The second step in assembly after box A was actually box F, which I would say is somewhat of a letdown since every box was labeled so boldly.