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.