Chicken Coop Provisions – Pre-Building Tips

If you would like to keep your birds in good physical shape as well as keep them content and happy, you will need to provide them with the proper housing.

As a general rule of thumb, in order to keep you birds satisfied your chicken coop must meet the following requirements:

• Your chicken coop must be predator proof from ALL sides. You will want to use a 15mm square wire mesh to cover the openings of your coop and keep the predators out and your chickens safe.

• It is not enough to just cover the coop with wire meshing, you should fence in the surrounding area with wire meshing as well. Also, be sure that you bury the wire mesh at least 7 inches below the ground level. This will help keep foxes and rats from burrowing their way through the fence.

• Chickens do not like breezes or wind, so although you need your coop to be well-ventilated, be sure not to put it somewhere out in the open where it will face winds. Chickens don’t mind the cold, but wind can be known to cause respiratory diseases in chickens.

• Before you design or build your chicken coop, make sure you consider how you’ll be cleaning it. You will want your coop to be as easy to clean as possible for you, to keep your work load to a minimum.

• Be sure to provide enough space for your birds so that they do not crowd each other. This can cause stress in the birds, and a stressed out chicken is an unhealthy chicken. Also, be sure to provide them with roosting poles since this is where they like to sleep.

• You should place one nesting box for every four or five birds into a dark corner. This will encourage them to begin laying eggs. When placing nest boxes within your coop, make sure that you keep them a little bit of the floor but also lower than the roosting poles that are inside.

• Leave your birds room to roam while in their coop. The more happy and stress-free your birds are, the better quality of eggs they will produce. As a general rule of thumb, make sure that there is at least four square feet of space per chicken.

• Of course you will need a waterier and feeder within your chicken coop.

• Using a plastic tray under the roosting poles can be a simple solution for cleaning up your chickens waste.

Remember, a happy chicken is a healthy chicken, and in the end will yield you better results.

So treat your chickens right with the proper chicken coop.

What Type of Chicken Coop Should You Build?

If you’ve decided you want to build a chicken coop then you’re more than likely trying to figure out what type of coop to build, and who can blame you considering there are so many options available. However, you really need to consider which type of coop will be best suited to your needs before you go ahead and start handing over any of your hard earned cash.

Essentially, there are a few factors which are more important than other and as such, you need to pay careful attention to them. Hopefully, those points which are mentioned in this article will help you to set out on the right foot so that you’ll end up having a coop which is ideal for your needs. Read more..

Keep Costs Down Building a Chicken Coop

Because building materials can have such a significant impact with regards to the amount of money you’ll spend on building a chicken coop, I’d like to discuss this specifically in this article.

Strangely enough, many people tend to believe that in order to build a chicken coop; they’ll require plenty of expensive building materials but this couldn’t be further from the truth because you can make a chicken coop from various materials. You can make one from old 50 gallons drums, an old garden shed, old bits of timber, or even from PVC pipes. Read more..

How to Build a Chicken Coop That Will Last

When some people go about building their own chicken coop they fail to take into account how to build it so that it lasts long enough to be worth the money they have invested in it. This problem can be overcome by gaining an understanding of how the materials should be used and getting an eye for the overall construction so that the coop will be sturdy and last a long time. Read more..

How to Protect Your Backyard Chickens

By now you should have some basic information on the ‘musts’ for building a chicken coop. This includes choosing the best type of coop for your preferences in the first place, choosing the correct materials that will enable you to keep costs down, and then how to build a chicken coop that will last for years to come.

All of these are vital so that you’re fully satisfied with the chicken house you build and don’t spend any more money than you absolutely have to.

Now it’s time to move on and take a look at what you must do in order to keep your chickens protected. Again this is a key element that must be taken care of if you want to keep your chickens for the long term because without protection, there is a very high chance that at some point or another, a predator is going to come around. Read more..

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