Chicken Coop Care

by chicken house plans on Monday, March 30th, 2009 | Comments Off

You want to live a more sustainable lifestyle. However, you're not ready for milking goats or going completely off the grid. Nope. You're going to start with something a little more basic - chickens! Now that you've decided where you want to start, you've got a lot of learning to do. You need to find out chicken care basics, including everything involved in building a good chicken coop.

To make a good chicken coop, you'll need to make sure you find a good location, that you provide adequate protection from the weather and from any animals hanging around in hopes of scoring a nice fat hen or a bunch of eggs and that you design a coop that makes it easy for you to care for your hens and gather their eggs each day.

Let's start with location. Chickens are not ducks. That means that you want to avoid positioning your coop in a spot that is swampy or has a tendency to collect rainwater. Your hens will not appreciate an indoor pool and could become sick if you give them a soggy hen house.

The next thing you need to consider is the actual construction of your coop. You don't need to be an architect to design a successful chicken coop, but you do need to know what chickens need. The main thing they need is a house that keeps any critters that lick their chops at the sight of your nice plump hens on the outside where they belong. Is a good idea to think twice about any plans to build a coop that sits right on the dirt. At the very least, you should attach poultry netting to the bottom edges of your coop and then bend it in so that any critters tunneling in come up under the netting instead of strolling on into your hen house. You may also need to guard against predators in the air by using an enclosed chicken run.

Next you'll need to take a look at your coop's interior design. You need a way to get excess humidity out of the coop. The easiest option is to put in some vents, but some people prefer to use a window that has a screen. You also need a place for the chickens to sleep at night. Place a perch about 36 inches off the floor to give your chickens a safe and comfortable roost.

Of course, the best hen house in the world isn't very useful if you don't provide the hens with good nest boxes. You should design your coop so that the nest boxes are about 24 to 30 inches from the ground. This helps you avoid having hens decide to sleep in the nest boxes. You also want to be sure to design the boxes with slanted tops so that the chickens don't decide to turn the top of the nest box into a roost. A final nest box design tip is to be sure that you provide a ledge for your hens to stand on as they enter or exit the nest box.

Once you understand these Chicken Coop Construction basics, you'll be well on your way to building a coop that will still be housing your backyard chicken flock long after you've become experienced enough to live a completely sustainable lifestyle.

Katelyn Thomas writes about frugal living and developing a more sustainable lifestyle at Mama On the Go

Chicken Care. Any tips for taking care of 2 chickens who are in a coop with a little protection from rain?

I have two chickens that I love. they are in a coop or more a rabbit hutch with a roost for them. but in this heavy and constant rain I want tips on wether it is ok for them to not run around.

I would put plastic over the areas that rain can get in but make sure you dont air tight the plastic where the chicks wont be able to breathe. If you have a fenced in area then let your chicks run around in that. i have a dog kennel that my chicks run around in and they love it. Or sometimes they get loose and i just bribe them with food and they come back. But its ok if your chicks get a little wet but not drenched and make sure that they lost all there baby feathers before they do get a little wet. Hope this helps