First Coast Pet

Posts Tagged ‘build a chicken coop’

Are you ready to start your chicken coop building program? It’s a lot easier then you might think, and we have the guidelines for you today.

When you’re start your chicken coop building endeavor, the fist thing you have to do is survey the area. It’s important to figure out where you’re going to put it and whether or not it’s going to be portable, semi-permanent or planted. It’s also important to have everything in place so you can give your chickens the best comfort possible. It needs to be clean, secure, and a good place for your flock to sleep and lay eggs.

Take a look at the guidelines below if you want a successfully built chicken coop:

Plan and Design

Since you already know how many chickens you have or plan to have, this will determine the overall size.

Think Ahead

Always keep in mind that there is something else to be done. There are 2 areas you should specifically think about:

• Allocate 4 heads of chicken per feeder and waterer;
• Save time by building the nest boxes at the same time you do your chicken coop building.

Place it in the Right Area

Even though you want a secure chicken coop building, you also have to think about sunlight. While we definitely don’t recommend placing your coop directly in the sun, there should be some present throughout the day.

Save Yourself Some Money

If you’re on a budget or just want to save some cash, we highly recommend looking in second hand shops. You will be surprised at all the deals you can find for your chicken coop building plans.

Don’t be afraid to purchase more than you need right now. It’s possible that in a year or two you will need to expand. Purchasing now will alleviate the extra and inflated cost down the road.

Building Chicken Coop Fun

When it’s time to start the chicken coop building, don’t forget about the little things along the way. For instance; notes, the plans, measuring tape, sander, power saw, work bench, face mask, gloves, and anything else you need. Now you’re ready! The only thing left to do is start building. Follow your plans to the “T” and be tedious when it comes to the security. This isn’t very hard to do, although it might take some time if you’re not familiar with carpentry work. You will start getting excited when you see it take shape, so go have some fun.

Good luck! When you stick with the building chicken coops guidelines it will end up being a lot easier than you think. Tested.

Kids really love to eat chickens and if they will have it their way, they will eat chickens until there are no more chickens left in the world. But seriously, just like any other food out there, toxins are ever present in them which can be very harmful to the body. As a responsible parent, you should be specific about what to put in the mouths of your youngsters and you have to make sure they get to eat the healthy foods while they are growing. If your children are really fond of eating chickens, why not raise some of your own in your own backyard? Raising them assures you that the chickens you have are all naturally-grown and what better way to make them grow healthy and strong and natural than putting them in a chicken coop. If you need some chicken coop plans to help you build your own chicken coop, then, you are in the right place.

Certainly, some people will say that it would be a lot more convenient to hire some handyman to let him build that chicken coop for your chickens. But hiring someone can be so expensive and sometimes, you just can’t be satisfied with the outcome. So, why need to hire somebody to do the work when you can do the job yourself and sometimes, things can be fun-filled when you try to convince all the members of your family to aid you in building that chicken coop. Let them help build chicken coop and for sure, kids will enjoy what they are doing.

Now, aside from the benefits of providing your family with good nutrition when you have chickens and possibly fresh eggs throughout your life, you can also have the chance to sell the eggs or the chickens to neighbors and other people, right? Try to learn more about chicken coop building plans and some more tips and advices and of course the step by step in building a coop and one of the ways to get these information is through a chicken coop-building book guide that is now being promoted all over the Net.

Build A Chicken Coop

Building A Chicken Coop

Choosing What Type of Coop You Require

Different Styles Of Coops

Probably one of the decisions you’re struggling with right now at this point is determining which type of chicken coop you desire.  There are a variety of different chicken coops that you can build, but understanding which one is going to best fit your needs is important for getting optimal results. If you spend the money on a chicken coop, it is only logical that it needs to match an individuals needs, so getting started on the right foot is important.

Factors involved

There are some important factors to take into consideration before coming to a decision on what type of chicken coop to build.The following guidelines will set you off down the right path to choosing wisely and being completely with your new chicken coop once it’s built.

Keeping my own chickens has been a long time wish of mine. I finally found time and built a medium sized chicken coop. The plans I bought over the internet made the process really easy. The ad for the book about how to build a chicken coop said that a 15 year old could build it. I guess that was meant to be a smart 15 year old! I can use a hammer, a saw and a screwdriver and that’s about all you’ll need by way of tools.

I want to tell you a bit more about my hobby of keeping chickens – I do it just as a hobby, not professionally, and see if I can help you to make some decisions if you’re thinking about keeping chickens in your backyard.

There was a time when chicken was a meal for a special, celebratory occasion. Today of course chicken is very common and hardly special at all. Raising chickens in batteries or factories has provided plentiful and therefore relatively cheap meat, compared to the cost of other meat. The way chickens are raised in batteries is also a major reason why I keep my own brood, in my own suburban backyard.

If you’ve ever seen a battery hen in a chicken factory you will know what I am talking about. The cruelty these birds have to endure for their whole life is nothing short of a disgrace and a blot on our conscience. I had seen enough cancerous, deformed and deranged hens, picking at their own and others flesh out of sheer madness, that I stopped eating chickens and eggs for quite a while until free range products became readily available.

Then I discovered that free range did not always mean what I thought it meant – what it is supposed to mean – and I decided to keep my own chickens in my own chicken coop.

I did not intend to go on a crusade against chicken farms here so let me tell you of some other very good reasons to keep your own chickens.

Fairly obviously, the eggs and the meat come in real handy. The eggs from a truly free-range chicken are nothing short of spectacularly delicious. The yolk is not that washed out colour of a battery egg from a chicken pumped full of estrogen and growth hormone. Instead, it’s a bright, vivid yellow/orange colour with an absolute burst of flavour.

I know some folk who made the mistake of giving their birds names so they will never slaughter their chickens for the table. I keep my birds anonymous so that I am not emotionally distraught when I slaughter them. Real free range, home reared chickens have meat that is quite different to a supermarket bird. It’s plump and has a taste that is just outstanding. The skin roasts to a delicious crispiness. I don’t know exactly how and why but it’s just markedly better tasting than a supermarket bird. The additives in the chicken feed must have an effect on the quality and taste of the meat.

The freshness of the meat and eggs from your backyard brood is a contributory factor to the improved taste of course, but the biggest influence on the taste of the products is the absence of chemicals in the birds diet. Chemicals fed to battery raised chickens destroys the natural taste of the eggs and the meat. The chemicals, by the way, also find their way into your system and so you have also probably ingested female hormones and steroids with every egg and piece of chicken you’ve ever eaten. The fishmeel additive in the chciken feed of factory birds affects the flavour of the meat.

In times like these when most people are trying to save some household costs and also trying to be more environmentally responsible, building a chicken coop and keeping your own chickens is a fairly substantial step in the right direction and it’s very easy to do. So, I guess the environmental impact is another good reason to have your own birds.

The fertiliser produced by the chickens is fantastic for your garden. Gardeners can save money using a non-phosphate laden fertiliser that comes naturally from the chickens.

Since the kids moved out there is often leftover food in our refrigerator that goes to waste. Well I should say used to go to waste because the chickens love leftovers. We don’t feed them onion or garlic but all other foods are welcomed by them. Not just leftovers either, but peelings and cuttings as well. They are little fertiliser factories taking the scraps and the peels and turning it into fertiliser that enhances the plants and vegetables we have growing. It’s lovely to see the cycle of nature as it should be. I let them out of their enclosure to trim the lawn every so often. Like little lawnmowers!

Some people consider their chickens as pets, and for them that is a true benefit of keeping chickens. For me – well I don’t see the chickens as anything other than foodstuff.

If you build the right chicken coop for your intended number of chickens and for the location then your chicken coop becomes a pleasure to maintain. Make sure thats easy to clean and well ventilated. Well looked after chickens produce more eggs.

Now, what about building the chicken coop itself. Building a chicken coop is easy using only basic skills. Any handyman could easily do this. That’s about it. The plans I eventually bought are step-by-step type plans so it was easy to follow. I was fortunate to choose a book of plans that also had other very valuable and useful information in it. Such as: where to place you coop, how to ensure that it doesn’t get too hot in the chicken coop and how to construct a coop that is easy to clean. Also, the book  contained advice on how to choose the correct type of bird for your area.

This is very good value from a book that only costs about $30. I paid very little for all the material I needed for my chicken coop at a local salvage yard. I built a medium sized chicken coop for under $200 and there is a local (major) hardware outlet that sells what I think is a lesser product for over $950. I saved a packet. My $200 investment was returned to me in under 6 months just on the value of eggs produced. By the way I keep 10 hens and I get 6 to 8 eggs every day. I sell 2-3 doz eggs a week and although I charge almost double the supermarket price, I have no shortage of eager customers!

You can buy the book that I used on the internet for only $29.95. Just click here. I really found it to be very useful – exactly what I needed. You get it as an instant download, as soon as you pay. The online payment process is 100% secure.

That’s it. I hope that this information was of some help to you and I hope you enjoy building your chicken coop as much as I enjoyed the task of building mine. It’s a good thing to do and the upside is substantial. Have fun!

You want to build a backyard chicken coop and save a load of cash in the process. Some people will tell you that it’s dirt cheap (excuse the pun) and some will say it can be a little on the expensive side. Here are 3 things you have to keep in mind to keep your costs down.

1. Do It Yourself

The best way to save money is simply to build a backyard chicken coop yourself. Even finding the cheapest contractor available to build your backyard chicken coop is going to end up costing you a lot more than just doing it yourself. If you’re reasonably handy and find a good set of chicken coop plans on the internet, you’ll ultimately save a lot of cash on labour.

2. Buy your own materials

Try not to buy any pre-made chicken coop kits. As with any “out of the box” solution, it’s almost always better to do some research and buy your own building materials. It is ultimately way more cost efficient to source your own lumber than to pay for someone else to do it for you. With some clever shopping you can find all the necessary materials you need to build a backyard chicken coop for around $300-$400.

3. Buy a quality set of plans

Buy a good high-quality set of chicken coop plans on the internet. It’s all well and fine to have all your lumber and chicken wire but if you’ve got a bad, hard to read set of plans, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. It is possible to download free plans off the internet but I’m a firm believer in “you get what you pay for” and advocate spending a few bucks to get a good set. There are plenty of options on the web but it pays to do your research and find the right set of plans for you.

One way is just put something together from whatever you have to hand, but you may regret this approach!

Think about what type would work best for you when you are building a chicken coop.

First off – how many chickens do you want to house?

Next – do you want to be able to move your chicken coop?

Now – where are you going to site your chicken coop?

And – how much space do you have?

Then – how are you going to design your chicken coop for easy cleaning?

And another thing – how will you position roosting bars and nest boxes?

Finally – how much time do you want to turn over to this project?

One way to get the best result when you are building a chicken coop is to buy a comprehensive set of plans and assembly instructions. Check the plans have several options so you can get a good idea of what will work for you.

Portable chicken arks are simple and quick to make and are ideal if you are just starting to keep chickens. They will take about three, and can be easily moved around your garden to new patched of grazing. Keeping the ark close to the house means you can watch the chickens easily.

A simple mid-size hen house won’t take you much longer to build and normally has a run attached. This is ideal for a larger flock of say, six hens. Identify an area to site the hen house that has good light and some protection.

You could let your chickens out when you’re there to supervise, or build both a chicken ark and a fixed coop so they can have new ground to scratch at.

Building a chicken coop is a straightforward weekend project if you start with plans and instructions – and you will get a chicken coop that looks good, functions well and will last a long time, for a fraction of the cost of buying one.