Do you want to learn more about chicken coop building plans?
There are many things to take into consideration when you are embarking on a project to build a chicken coop:
1. How many chickens do you intend to house?
2. How much egg production do you anticipate from your chickens?
3. What kind of predatory threats do you need to keep your chickens protected from?
4. What kind of weather conditions will your chickens be faced with year around?
5. Do you intend to allow your chickens the freedom to come and go from the coop into an enclosed yard?
6. Do you intend for your chicken coop to be mobile, on wheels, so that you can move it from place to place as required? Or do you intend for your coop to remain stationary and permanently fixed in one location at all times?
These are just some of the questions that you would need to take into consideration before you start building your coop. There are many sample chicken coop building plans available for you to use as a template for building your own coop, that address each of these issues. Whether you regard your chickens are an asset, as family pets, or members of your family, you need to do whatever it takes to provide the best care for them, the best environment for them to grow and subsist healthy and active, and product healthy eggs. So it is for this reason that you should make your best effort to build the right chicken coop for your birds. You should not try to cut corners and take shortcuts. Doing so can put the safety of your chickens at risk and could potentially invite harm to come to your chickens.
So if you want to learn more about chicken coop building plans, you need to realize that you are not just building a structure but you are nurturing lives, you are making an investment, and you are protecting an assets. You don’t have to be a carpenter or an expert at building things. You just need to be able to follow simple directions. This way you can avoid making costly mistakes. Building a coop does not have to be expensive. In fact, if you follow the right building plans, you can reasonable expect to be able to save countless dollars and save a considerable amount of time, as well.
Raising chickens can be a fun and rewarding experience, but knowing how to raise them can be a challenge sometimes. Check out my website if you want to learn more about raising chickens and Learn More About Chicken Coop Building Plans.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gregory_Washburn –
Being a starter in the world of raising chickens, one of the important thing you should consider and is also necessary is the fact that you can protect your raised chickens without even being on a shot-gun watch for 24 hours every waking day; that is why you have to build a pen that will last for a very long period of time. Before building chicken coops, planning and gathering is the very first step.
Location is the first thing to consider. Do you live in a rural or in an urban area? Your answer will depend on the chickens you can keep. Usually in rural communities, the number of livestock you want can be unlimited but when in urban settings, raising chickens can have restrictions regarding its number. Or sometimes, they are totally banned.
Another thing is the kind of chicken that you are planning to raise. If they weigh heavier, this will be an advantage because this kind of status will make it more difficult for them to fly away. A simple wire and post design pen can be used. But in most instances chickens are more prone to flying away. Especially if they are not used to the place, a fence with a higher walls or wires is more appropriate.
The place where you construct your chicken coop must be safe and sturdy enough to withstand any predator’s mark. It should be constructed in a way that your poultry are not easily snatched not only by scavengers but also by people who are pretty much interested in chicken stew. They must be protected and locked-in, especially at night.
What is a post and wire type of pen? It is by far the simplest kind of design wherein materials like posts, strong wires, fence staples are used. The tools needed to help you complete the job are the ordinary hammer, wire cutters, crowbar and sledgehammer. Gathering these materials are the very first thing you have to do upon planning.
Fence post can’t be bought one at a time but in bundles. If you became worried that the excess lumbers will go to waste once the fence is finished, worry no more. This is because fence posts can be used in incredible purposes like supporting beams for sheds. Chicken wire is usually used. But for safety purposes a stucco wire is stronger and is more recommended for holding building sides.
There are really no actual fence staples, that is why the local staples used for wiring can be used as an alternative. Skimping the staples should not be stressed. You need a lot while construction is ongoing and also additional supplies in cases of emergencies.
The sledgehammer is used to pound the post into the soil. Weight is the first thing that you have to take note of when choosing a sledgehammer. Make sure that it is not too heavy that you can’t lift it up and not too light that you will need to exert all your efforts just to pound your post.
The crowbar is used for digging a hole where the pole will be placed. Lastly, the regular hammer will be useful for those hardheaded staple wires to dig in the posts.
Now that all materials are properly intact, you can plan on the actual building of the pen.
There have been thoughts on what to do with your flock daily. Raising chickens can be quite easy but also needs maintenance to keep their environment safe and clean for both your chickens and your own happiness. Some owners hesitate to do such a grueling task. But in reality it is one of the easiest works you can do to give your chickens the welcome they deserve.
In this section, you’ll learn about what to do and what not to do daily.
- Keep their feed and water containers full at all times. Do not let them run out of these two essentials. They need these two things everyday to live. If you tend to leave your house for a couple of days, be sure to leave sufficient food and water so that your chickens don’t run out of their needs and will not reach the point of picking on each other.
- Keep them safe, warm and protected with a nice sized chicken coop. If you need ideas on how to build a chicken coop, check out the chicken coop plans that I found online.
- Clean their water canister. If their water becomes cloudy or if they sensed that it’s already dirty, they will refuse to drink it and in the long run, they will become dehydrated and eventually conjure illness and die.
- Every morning, observe for their health status. Look at their physical attitude. Do they look bright, active, and healthy? If they don’t look anything close to normal, then you should call or see the vet to ask for suggestions and answers.
- If you are the type who loves collecting eggs for breakfast or for selling, the moment they are laid, you can already get them from the coop. Put the eggs inside the fridge to maintain its freshness.
- From time to time, you will have the chance to visit their coop and look at your chickens. Before you leave, make sure that things are safe inside and outside the pen. If you see rat holes, block it. If everything seems fine, be sure to close the door. As dusk comes, that will be the time when all the chickens are in their nest. Not a single chicken in sight. Secure the area so that predators will not have the opportunity to get in.
Unlike other pets, you can leave the chickens for days. You have to keep in mind that they have to be provided with enough food and water supply. If you came back and found eggs, it’s still okay to collect. It still has its freshness.
Here’s a fact that you should know about an egg’s freshness: it will take you at least 12 days from the day that it was laid before it matures and an embryo develops inside.
Another thing that you should know about eggs is that upon collecting them, there will be chances that you will see slight smudges of dirt or feces on the egg’s surface. Do not attempt too scrub the dirt off no matter how the urge is killing you. Because one thing about eggs is that they are not ejected to this world without protective barriers.
Bloom is the term that is given to the membrane that is located at the surface of the egg itself. The use of the bloom is to protect the egg from bacteria and microorganisms that may insist on penetrating through the shell. If you scrub this, you take away the protective covering.
But if you are that type of person who wanted things to always be spiffy clean, like that of the obsessive-compulsive type, you can clean the dirty egg provided it will be under warm water and in a very gentle touch.
maintain chicken coops
Since we’ve gone over a great deal of the information you need to successfully build a chicken coop with our chicken coop plans, it’s time to talk about one last factor, maintenance. Since you’ve put in a good effort getting your coop up and running, it would be a shame to let it start to disintegrate over time due to lack of care. Fortunately, maintaining and repairing a chicken coop isn’t all that difficult provided you stay on top of things regularly.
Here are some of the main things you should know about.
Pay Attention To The Door
Since the door is one area of the coop that’s going to be constantly moving as you go in and out to feed the chickens, it’s something you’ll want to watch and maintain regularly. If the latch is becoming loose, be sure you fix this immediately so your chickens don’t find a way to escape out.
If you find that you’re regularly having issues with it, you may want to consider either replacing the door altogether or else just finding a more secure latch and being sure it’s bolted to the door properly.
Each farmer will have their own preference when it comes to the opening door so figure out what works best for you.
Regularly Check Your Fence
Another aspect of the chicken house that should be monitored at least once a month is the structure of the fence. If you do have predators that come around frequently, they may attempt to get in which can impact the stableness of your fence, calling for some rebuilding if necessary.
Some fences are also quite prone to falling over after so much time, so walk around and test various areas of the fence to see how well it’s standing up still.
Check The Feeders
Keeping a close eye on the feeders located in the chicken coop is also vital since these will be used on a daily basis. In some cases if the feeders are very beat up it could be a signal you should consider installing another one into the coop as the chickens may be constantly fighting over food and picking at the feeder.
You also want to watch how your chickens are responding to the feeder height. In some cases you’ll get chickens who prefer a feeder to be slightly lower or higher than how you placed it, so adjusting this as time goes in is important for the overall comport of your chickens.
Usually it just needs to be adjusted an inch or two, but this makes a huge difference in how easily they can access their food.
So, don’t neglect the maintenance of your chicken coop. If you decided to go with a mobile chicken coop you’ll find that maintenance does tend to be quite a bit easier since you can just move the coop to wherever you are. If you didn’t, than that just means regularly planning maintenance into your weekly or monthly schedule as you see fit.
Your chicken building should always contain a perch. When building your chicken coop the perch should be made like a ladder, sloping back to the wall and with enough space between each perch to keep the chickens roosting above from pooing on the chickens on the bottom rack. You can put the bottom perch any distance from the floor, two feet or so. Make sure there is plenty of room for the birds to roost without being too crowded.
You can hang your waterer and feeder from your rafters and that will keep them from pooing in the water and feed, plus they can not dig out all the feed to get to the stuff they like best. Most chickens like things like watermelon rind and veggies too, so we always gave those to our birds as a treat, they will pretty much peck a rind till you could read the paper thru it!
If you have a lot of chickens, you may want to buy lice dust just in case wild birds give them lice, that’s a mess to get rid of and the lice will get on humans also.
Oyster shell for grit and calcium and a good chicken feed is about all you need for feed. They love green grass also, so if you have them in a lot where there is none, you can take grass clippings, ONLY FRESH ones , and give them those too as a treat.
Chickens need a safe place from predators so make sure nothing can get into your chicken coop. Even a 2 inch hole will let rats in and we lost some chickens to raccoons who found a 4 inch hole in the floor, still have no idea how on earth the raccoon got thru the hole , but he did!
Good luck with your chickens and your chicken coop plans, fresh eggs are great!
