I think there is no harm done in, a hypothetical world where people had the space to do such a thing, raising our own livestock, limited to individual homesteads or the immediate settlement (a local town market, for example).
That’s fundamentally what I’m doing. My girlfriend also loves chickens and ducks so we bought a couple, build a big, nice coop for them (with fucking floor heating because why not lmao), also dug a pond for the ducks and now we have plenty of eggs and my girlfriend can just sit in the chicken enclose when depression kicks and the chickens and ducks take care of that. Best decision we made so far.
100% this, thankfully I’m lucky enough that in the near future I may be living in a quiet cottage. It’s always been a goal of mine to be self-sufficient, and that process will begin there.
Same, I moved to austria for that goal alone. There’s plenty of lone areas around and we’ve been able to find a massive piece of land with an old farmers house which took a lot of work to restore it. We’re not at full self-sufficiency yet, which honestly won’t happen anyways since for some things like internet access, you always need some dependency, but we aim to produce most of the stuff we eat and most of the power we consume ourselves until 2030.
I’m certainly no expert, but a heated floor in a chicken coop seems like a bad idea.
It seems like it would be a fire hazard in a coop and regardless of that, seems like you would have to keep it much cleaner as it’s going to create a breeding ground for germs (and potentially attract critters)
It’s certainly no fire hazard. It’s heated with hot water. If the water gets hot enough to ignite the coop, I might have a completely different problem because that same water is used in my house lmao.
The cleaning part is also not that true since we don’t heat the stable to like 30°C at all times. It’s only for winter when temperatures drop massively where we heat the stable to like 15°C. But we clean the coop every two days anyways, I’ve designed it to be easy to clean. It’s fundamentally just a plywood plate that I can take out. Only takes like 15 minutes - remove the hay, remove the floor, pressure wash it, put it back in, add new hay, done. The pipes are directly below the plate, covered in styrofoam, heating it very reliably in winter without being some kind of danger to the coop.
I think if I just thought about installing an electric heated floor in anything on my ground, the austrian construction safety office would raid my house. I highly doubt that is legal here.
That’s fundamentally what I’m doing. My girlfriend also loves chickens and ducks so we bought a couple, build a big, nice coop for them (with fucking floor heating because why not lmao), also dug a pond for the ducks and now we have plenty of eggs and my girlfriend can just sit in the chicken enclose when depression kicks and the chickens and ducks take care of that. Best decision we made so far.
100% this, thankfully I’m lucky enough that in the near future I may be living in a quiet cottage. It’s always been a goal of mine to be self-sufficient, and that process will begin there.
Same, I moved to austria for that goal alone. There’s plenty of lone areas around and we’ve been able to find a massive piece of land with an old farmers house which took a lot of work to restore it. We’re not at full self-sufficiency yet, which honestly won’t happen anyways since for some things like internet access, you always need some dependency, but we aim to produce most of the stuff we eat and most of the power we consume ourselves until 2030.
I’m certainly no expert, but a heated floor in a chicken coop seems like a bad idea.
It seems like it would be a fire hazard in a coop and regardless of that, seems like you would have to keep it much cleaner as it’s going to create a breeding ground for germs (and potentially attract critters)
It’s certainly no fire hazard. It’s heated with hot water. If the water gets hot enough to ignite the coop, I might have a completely different problem because that same water is used in my house lmao.
The cleaning part is also not that true since we don’t heat the stable to like 30°C at all times. It’s only for winter when temperatures drop massively where we heat the stable to like 15°C. But we clean the coop every two days anyways, I’ve designed it to be easy to clean. It’s fundamentally just a plywood plate that I can take out. Only takes like 15 minutes - remove the hay, remove the floor, pressure wash it, put it back in, add new hay, done. The pipes are directly below the plate, covered in styrofoam, heating it very reliably in winter without being some kind of danger to the coop.
Not sure why my mind went to electric heated floor lol. Must be too used to Jerry-riggers.
I think if I just thought about installing an electric heated floor in anything on my ground, the austrian construction safety office would raid my house. I highly doubt that is legal here.