Chicken Coops Designs Blog

Before you begin your chicken coop building project, make sure that you have all the necessary tools to complete the same. While building a chicken shed you will require all the staple tools and supplies necessary for a backyard construction.

In addition to that, you need a level, a framing square and a carpenter’s measuring tape. Without a level you will not be able to judge the slant of the location on which you are building the chicken shed. A framing square will be of great help while cutting the wood for the coop. This will ensure that you cut at 90 degree angles so that assembling various parts will not be a problem later.

Apart from the regular hammer and nails. You will also need an electric drill and some screws. In case you do not have an electric drill, you can always use a hand screwdriver, though it may tire your wrist by the end of the day.

The use of screws is preferred over nails while building a chicken coop as it grips the lumber more firmly and keeps it in place longer than nails. Since you will be working with lumber while constructing a chicken shed, you should get a circular or table saw to make the necessary cuts as per the design that you have chosen.

It is extremely important to seal up the chicken coop well from all sides so that the poultry does not feel the chill during winter months. To ensure that there are no loopholes in this regard, you should get a caulking gun and buy a small quantity of exterior silicone as well. Make sure that you place your chickens in the coop only after 72 hours of the silicon treatment as this chemical produces some toxic fumes that can be bad for the poultry.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop designs, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.

If you have been planning to build your own chicken coop in the backyard for a long time, but have been dilly dallying with the idea due to budget constraints, we can provide you some useful tips to help you lower the cost of your coop construction project.

An easy way to cut down the cost of building is by following the age old policy of Do It Yourself. This way, you will be able to save on the labor costs that you would have to otherwise pay from your pocket. The professionals charge a lot of money for building a coop that can easily be constructed by you if only you have a basic knowledge of carpentry.

Also, it is highly recommended that you do not get a pre-built chicken coop from the market as these are priced anywhere near $300 whereas you can make a similar one on your own at 50 percent of the cost.

The first step in building a budget friendly chicken coop is making a detailed plan about the type of coop
that you want to build with regards to the design and size that would suit your needs the best. Once you finalize this, you need to select an ideal corner of your backyard for building the coop and get the necessary hand tools that you will need for the purpose.

A coop needs proper lighting and ventilation. By opting for a chicken coop design that has large windows, you can save a considerable amount on electrical wiring in the coop for lighting. You can also lower the cost of your chicken coop by using second hand materials to build the same. You can get good quality wood, iron sheets and various roofing materials for a steal at a second hand store.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop designs, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.

There are many benefits out of making your own chicken coop. Because the world factors price most strongly, the greatest benefit is the cost savings that you can get. Ready made coops of course cost a lot more.

While making them yourself, you cut down on the cost of labor, structuring, transportation and a lot more. Another very big advantage is that you can use more durable raw materials. Because, you save on a lot of costs, you can add a little more to the strength of the raw materials required. The coops will then be structurally very strong.

You can buy a mobile coop from market but they will be fragile and expensive. While building them yourself, you are at an advantage again. You can make a coop that can be ideal for the weather or climate near your backyard.

Each climate requires a different kind of coop. the materials used shall be elastic so that the area of the coop automatically expands during summer. This makes the hens lay eggs in comfort. You can match the coop with the structure of your house to create the effect of synchrony. Also, you will get great contentment out of building your own coop. it is a pleasure that humans derive out of their effort.

A hen house or a chicken coop is ideally made larger and not smaller than your need. Some extra space can never harm but lesser space can get really stuffy and may be detrimental to the health of chicken that you raise in it.

Think of all these benefits prior to going to a shop for buying the materials that you need to make your own chicken coop or hen house. Yes, there are some efforts involved but it is more than worth for what you get in return for sure.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop designs, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.

It is an age old practice to raise chickens in the backyard. There are multiple benefits of having a backyard flock of chickens, top ten of which are listed below:

1. One of the most obvious reasons for raising chickens in your home is free eggs. Once you have set up a chicken coop in your backyard and started raising chickens in them, you will not have to make frequent trips to the supermarket every time you need eggs.

2. In addition, you can get a regular supply of delicious chicken meat. To add to that, you can be completely sure that the meat that you consume is healthy as well as steroid and antibiotic free.

3. In case you have a superfluous supply of eggs, you can even make a few extra bucks by selling them in your neighborhood.

4. With chickens in your backyard, you will never have to worry about leftovers in your kitchen. As chickens eat just about everything, you can always feed them unwanted leftovers that would otherwise rot in your fridge.

5. Chickens are great for the purpose of debugging the garden as well since they snack on beetles, insects, grubs and earwigs that may be roaming around your garden.

6. As chickens feed on leaves and weeds in your backyard they will effectively clip your grass and save you the hassle of mowing your backyard or garden.

7. Rearing chickens will also help you learn all about poultry.

8. Chickens make for great pets and are extremely low maintenance. Just provide them with the basic necessities of food and water and clean the coop at least two times a month.

9. Apart from that chicken poop serves as an excellent fertilizer for your garden.

10. Lastly, you can rear chickens simply for fun and the novelty associated with these pets.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop designs, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.

Growing concerns about global warming has motivated all of us to make small contribution towards the causes of Go Green revolution. If you too are wondering about ways to do your bit in saving our planet, you can begin by building your own chicken coop.

In case you are confused about how this will help in undoing the damages done to the environment, you will be pleasantly surprised to learn about the multiple eco benefits of building a chicken coop in your backyard. It is even better if you have a mobile chicken coop that can be moved around your backyard.

To begin with, chicken poop is an excellent plant fertilizer. You can ask your gardener about it and he will surely vouch for it as the best garden fertilizer available in the contemporary times. The manure made from chicken poop has extremely low protein content and just the correct balance of potash, nitrogen and phosphate, which makes it an ideal fertilizer.

The best way to use chicken waste as fertilizer is by turning it into compost. This again has twin ecological advantages. First of all, you will develop an effective waste recycle system thus decreasing the amount of waste that needs to be disposed off. Secondly, you will be producing a fertilizer that does not have any adverse impact on the environment.

You can get further ecological benefits of having your own chicken coop in the backyard. These include the following benefits:

• With chickens in your backyard you can bid adieu to chemical weed and bug sprays that you have to use on a regular basis. Chicken are great debuggers as weeds and garden insects and bugs form their main diet.
• You can also contribute to the environmental improvement by using recycled or second hand materials to build your own chicken coop.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop construction, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.

It is an earnest desire to make good chicken coops. In fact, the coops shall be comfortable, weather-friendly, large enough and yet save a lot on cost. It is not possible if you buy ready made coops. Moreover, when you build yourself, you can pack a strong structural strength to the coops.

Let us check nice coop plans that can be built the DIY way. You can go for chicken tractors if you do not have a large number of chickens. These are portable or mobile coops. These can be ideally done with some lumbar and whatever utility paint left in the closet. You can keep moving them to spare the lawn grass. Fixed ones trounce the grass. PVC pipes, tarps, barrels, trailers, lumbar and a lot else can be used to make a chicken coop.

A top coop plan will cater to a minimum of 8 chickens and provide acreage of minimum 4.5 square feet to each of them. Also the chickens must have an unshared 9 inches of perch length. The structure shall allow for chicken hatchways and ample air and light. The space shall be ideal for the maintenance rounds. Without cleaning, the coops can get much disoriented. While making a coop, you need not bring in the feeder systems and water pipes into play. However, adding them would not harm you in any away.

If you are planning to make a chicken coop with at least 6 egg layers, you will need a minimum nesting space of 9 square feet for the same. This means that you can allow 3 nests to be shared between 8 chickens if your chicken coop is of an ideal size. It is always a good idea to build a little bigger chicken coop. Nothing suits eyes more than well balanced, spacious coops made in DIY way.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop designs, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.

For a homestead today, huge choices of chicken breeds are readily available. You can buy from any of them though you need to keep a few things in mind to make a prudent decision.

First things first; while ordering online; you must look to fetch your chickens from a respected hatchery. Go for very young flocks. Those birds which are considered good for the bi-fold purpose of laying egg as well as giving meat are considered the best. There are a few heavy species perfectly suited to the purpose. Also, make sure that you buy compatible breeds of chicken.

The black Australorps or Rhode Island Reds are considered to be perfect setters and they have a dense plumage to shelter them for great cold. This is why they incubate the eggs properly even in times of harsh winter. Specialty breeds are to be looked out for. They have a beautiful appearance.

The crests at their head, the feathers and plumes and sometimes their whole body structure are so elegant that they are heart winners. Cuckoo Marans and Plymouth rocks are both very good layers and hatchers. So a few look good, the others lay good egg and then there are a few who are adept at both the aspects.

Heritage breeds are a craze. These are not genetically tampered to be good at a single task and thus they give great meat and produce eggs of high quality too. The feed to production ratio of the white egg layers is considered very high. Thus, they can be used for egg production all year and in continued fashion.

Choose your breeds with prudence and give them great chicken coops for breeding in comfort and lots of space. The perching and nesting shall be given due stress if you want healthy chickens.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop designs, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.

If you have always dreamt of raising backyard chickens and intend to set up a chicken coop soon, you need to decide on an ideal location for its construction. Even though many first time coop builders remain preoccupied with the design, building plan and the cost estimates of the chicken coop, selecting the best location for your chicken housing is the most important consideration of all.

While a correct decision in this regard will help you raise healthy chickens, a wrong choice will result in sickly and unproductive poultry. Thus, it may prove to be a costly mistake to think that the location of the chicken shed is inconsequential in determining the productivity of your flock.

It is always better to select a slightly sloping area of your backyard to build the chicken coop as this will avoid dampness. In addition to that, ensure that the area has proper water drainage system so that there are no chances of formation of water puddles, which when mixed with chicken poop become a breeding ground for poultry infection and illness. To reduce this problem further, you should select a chicken shed design that provides ample sunlight which will help to keep the shed dry and clean.

It is also important to judge the wind direction in a particular location before building a chicken coop on it. It will be wise to build your coop on a site from where the wind does not blow the unpleasant odor of the shed towards your home or that of your neighbor.

If you want a year long supply of eggs from your chickens, you need to make artificial light arrangements for them in the winter months. Thus, build your shed near an electricity source. Lastly, set up your coop in a location that has additional space to allow further expansion in future.

Peter D Jones is a chicken farming and poultry expert from London and likes to write about chicken coop designs, poultry farming, and related subjects. Please visit his website http://www.chickencoopsdesigns.com/ for more information.