Silicone safe in chicken coop?

[ecoprincess]

Hi everyone

DH built me a chicken coop last year but due to various reasons we put off getting some chickens until this year, so we should be getting some in Spring!

We built the coop ourselves out of pallets, and my only concern is there are lots of cracks or indents in the wood where I'm worried red mites might like to live.

I've thought that I could go along all these indents and fill them in with silicone which would make less hiding places for mites, but would this be safe for the chickens? I'd be doing it now and wouldn't be putting any chickens in for about a month.

Hope that makes sense! The cracks are because we've used lots of planks of pallet wood to build the walls rather than one big smooth piece of wood like the ones you see in the shops.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[chris]

Just paint it liberally in the cracks with creocote (make sure it's totally dry before introducing chickens). I used silicone, and they pulled it out - only found out when I found one running around the garden with what I thought was a huge worm in it's mouth - before catching it and pulling it out - it was about a metre length of silicone she'd pulled out of the crack.

[SarzWix]

Wood filler? It's paintable, so could be covered with creocote and that way wouldn't look attractive to hens to peck at it,

[Aberdeenplotter]

get some more pallets and then use the wood from them to overlap the cracks. That's the way henhouses used to be made (not from pallets but from planks with narrow strips used to cover the cracks)

[Glutton4...]

No. Definitely. They peck at everything. They eat almost anything. Chris was very lucky he caught his before she managed to eat it.