Poultry Farming and Chicken houses

Layer cages come in various sizes. They are made from galvanised steel to stop the rust. A good layer cage will have a system that provides water and food easily to the hens. Layer cage are banned in Europe, but not in South Africa. This form of egg production is known as factory farming and provides an easy method of growing layers for egg production. If you want to produce free range eggs or organic eggs you will not be able to use layer cages. Our layer cages are the cheapest in South Africa, and can be supplied with or without a chicken house. They can be purchased in a kit form to be assembled later - or we can come out and assemble them for you. The layer cages are supplied with a nipple drinking system - at the front of the battery cages are a series of small water tanks. These allow the pressure from the tank to be low enough that the nipples do not leak. They are also there to enable the chicken farmer to medicate all the birds on that line of nipple drinkers - medication, vitamins and supplements are added directly in to the water tanks and are fed to the chickens. The hens get their food from galvanised troughs located at the front of the cages. These cages are not fully automated - fully automated cages have a belt which moves along where the egg catch trays are - the eggs are collected and taken to an egg weighing room.

The new layer cages supplied by Chicken Shack are bigger than normal - featuring a cage or bay that can hold up to 7 laying hens. This means when you have a layer house built you need a minimum with of 4 meters on your chicken house - this will give you enough space to walk between the cages to collect eggs (and enough space to run some kind of egg trolley if need be). If the layer house is 3m wide you only have 1/2 a meter space between the layer cages. If you want to push an egg trolley you will need more space than that.

Chicken Layer Cages - cheapest layer cages in Africa. Available in Kit form - or we can come and install them for you. Our poultry layer cages are made from galvanised steel and available in different sizes. If you do not want to farm with layer cages you will need to use nest boxes. Nest boxes are used by farmers selling barn eggs or free range eggs or organic eggs. Collectiing eggs from nest boxes takes a little longer than collecting eggs from a layer cage.

Contact us now for a price on layer cages. Battery cages are another name for layer cages. They are used in a chicken house specifically designed for layers (hens in lay) and for chicken egg production. Cage eggs, or battery eggs are eggs that come from a hen that is raised in a factory farm. Barn eggs just mean that the hen does not live in a cage, but has free access to the whole house - these are not the same as free range. A hen laying barn eggs will need nest boxes to lay eggs in. Layer cages can be 3 tier or 2 tier - this is similar to the stories in a block of flats - it means that a 2 tier cage is 2 stories high ... a 3 tier cage has 3 level of chickens living one above the other. The cages are in fact not directly above one another but slightly staggered. A dung curtain hangs at the back of each of the lower level cages to stop litter from dirtying the birds below. If the birds are healthy the dung will dry in a short time and the house will not smell (too bad). If the nipples in the drinkers leak, or the birds are sick and their dung is runny, a layer house can smell very bad. This is a sign of an unhealthy house - which usually means unhealthy hens. The low curtains on the sides of the house allow air to flow across the litter and dry it it out. The fans in the roof of the layer house will also help with heat and with drying the litter. Unlike in a broiler house, no shavings are used in a hen house for egg production. The cages stand on a concrete floor and the litter falls directly on to the floor. Every few weeks the chicken farmer will scrape this up and remove it, or sell it to someone who makes compost. The hens will live in the cages for about 60 weeks - after this the number eggs the chickens lay begins to taper off to a pint where the maths do not make sense. The hens lay less eggs than is spent on chicken feed, and the longer they are kept the less eggs they lay. After the chickens are laying too few eggs they are sold for their meat and new layers are purchased.