We love our Omlet Eglu Cube, and so do our chickens. It’s easy to maintain, easy to clean, and looks great. We chose it precisely because it is a low maintenance way to raise hens, and because nobody offered anything like it.

Until now.

The Eden Project has started selling a range of self-sufficiency products through its online shop, including a couple of plastic chicken houses. They come in two sizes – small, for two birds and medium for four – and their biggest plus-point is their environmental credentials: they’re recycled.

Entirely.

The plastic shells are the melted down and reformed remains of old computers, food containers and so on and, because of plastic’s epoch-defining longevity, should last… well, a lifetime.

The only thing that puts us off is the look. To our eyes they’re more than a little like a rolling-lid communal bin you might find behind a block of flats.

If you can get past the looks, though, they’re a cheap introduction to chicken keeping, with the cheapest two-hen model undercutting Omlet’s entry level ‘Go’ by around £70.

The medium house, which will provide a home for four hens (and is thus more directly comparable to the Go), costs £279 plus £12 delivery. None of those prices include the optional £99 run, though, which to our mind is essential for the safety of your hens.

* Delivery charges quoted are to our local area – Essex.

The Eden Project hen houses have clever rotating openings on the sides to let you regulate the ventilation, which is a feature missing from the Eglu Cube, where the vents are a fixed part of the moulding. They also have a ramp for entering and leaving the coop, in contrast to the Cube’s ladder, which even after 18 months of living in it still causes our hens some concern.

So, is it worth foregoing the looks and paying a little more for an environmentally conscious option? The answer is probably yes, and we’d love to try one out to see how it stacks up against the market leader.

We do love our Eglu, though.

Related posts:

1. Your chicken-keeping questions answered
2. How cosy is a chicken coop?
3. Popular Blagger posts of January 2010