There's something about a nesting box falling out from under your hens that really gets the heart racing, right up there with that moment you spot a suspicious red patch and wonder if it's That red spot won't quit: could your feathered friend be fighting fowl play. Our take? If your coop is literally coming apart at the seams, it's time to stop patching and start upgrading, and the Eglu Cube by Omlet looks like a genuine contender for anyone who wants to sleep at night without visions of raccoons dancing in their head.
We feel this one personally. Losing two guinea hens to what you suspect was a raccoon is the kind of heartbreak that turns a casual chicken keeper into a fortress-builder. The Eglu Cube's selling points, welded mesh, locking mechanisms, a design that claims to be predator-proof, are exactly what you need when you've already learned the hard way that "good enough" isn't. And you've already got one of their waterers and like the quality, which counts for more than any glossy product page ever could. But here's the question that sticks with us: is any coop truly fowl-proof, or are we all just playing an expensive game of keep-away with the local wildlife? It reminds us of the time someone found Pine Marten Poo: A Cluck-Tastic Guide to Identifying Fowl Play in their compound, proof that predators are creative, and our coops have to be more creative still.
For four Rhode Island Reds, the Eglu Cube is probably overkill on size but exactly right on peace of mind. That's not a bad trade. The real test isn't how the coop looks in the catalog, it's whether that bottom latch holds up at 3 AM when something with clever paws is testing every seam. We'd love to hear from someone who's had one through a hard winter or a determined raccoon, because the difference between a good coop and a great one is usually discovered at 4 AM in your bathrobe with a flashlight. Until then, we're cautiously cluck-tastic about the Eglu Cube, but we're also keeping an eye on those nesting boxes, because if there's one thing we've learned, it's that Meet the tiny terror that's egg-ceptionally cute and mildly terrifying can be the one that teaches you the most about what your setup is missing.