Need suggestions on indoor set up

[Fluster Cluck Acres]

My special little girl, Peanut Butter, needs an upgraded indoor set up so I’m looking for suggestions.

PB is a “large fowl” Barnevelder who weighs in at a whopping 3 lbs. She’s an indoor/outdoor girl, but she doesn’t do well in extreme weather conditions. As it gets colder, she’ll need to spend more time inside.

For almost a year now, Peanut Butter has spent her nights in a small metal dog crate sitting up on an end table w/ puppy pads in my living room. Her days are mostly spent in the garden or helping me with lawn chores. When the weather is bad or her condition deteriorates, she spends more time indoors listening to the radio and watching the dogs

Presently Peanut Butter is doing very well. This means she’s eating regularly and relatively active- which is such a relief, but also means she’s pooping more. She has issues with her balance, so when she poos on the puppy pads, she sometimes falls in it. She can’t perch so sleeps on the bottom of the crate- along with the overnight poop. (She gets more baths than she would like).

PB is very accustomed to being indoors and even when feeling her best, she’s not a terribly active bird. I’d like to get her set up in something a little bigger than the dog crate, but she doesn’t require deluxe accommodations. She’ll still get outside as much as possible. If I give her too big of a space, she’d have to be moved to the guest room and isolated from the other pets & activity in the house.

I want to put her on a type of substrate that will help keep her out of her droppings (something it will fall into or dry it up).

I’m leaning toward a guinea pig cage with the plastic bottom and wire top, but am open to other ideas.

If you’ve ever kept a chicken indoors, can you please share how you set them up and what substrate worked best? Is there something better for an indoor bird than pine shavings or pellets? Thanks for your ideas!

And just to clarify- one of the reasons PB is indoors is because she hates chickens.

And here’s my baby girl. She asked me to vote for whoever would ban chicken nuggets, lol.

 

[Ecarroll]

Does she have some sort of illness that causes her to be unhealthy? And also to keep her inside? I’ve never kept chickens inside but I feel like maybe a large Guinea pig cage could work. Why do you keep her inside, just curious not trying to judge.

 

[Bawkbok]

From TSC, we purchased a 4x4 dog crate - it came with a canvas cover. This was my main reason for the purchase knowing I was going to use it inside during the hurricane. The canvas "roof" prevents fly aways. It's really meant to be an outside temporary dog pen. It is sturdy, very heavy actually, is easy to set up and take down, one person can do it. It folds up accordian style so it doesn't require a lot of space when not used. You need at least a 4 ft by 5 ft space however, to accommodate opening the gate. We put a plastic shower liner on the floor, followed by cut up cardboard boxes, which of course are a little slippery, so we added pine shavings on top. To prevent the shavings from falling out of the rungs, bring the shower curtain liner up the sides. You can secure it with zippy ties, or just cut some extra cardboard to run along the outside, the size of your baseboards should do it. With a feeder, waterer, a bench for perching and a laundry basket turned on it's side, there was still ample room for 3 chickens to move about. They were not crammed at all. If I can locate a picture I'll post it here. This would work for your girl and give her much more room to move about. The cost of the crate (with cover included) was $160 I think after negotiating on the original price of $180. It was the last one they had and was set up outside in the elements, which is why I think I had the negotiating power on my side.