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Posts Tagged ‘chicken house designs’

Here are the required materials you will be using to build your own chicken coop. There are several fundamental demands that must be taken into consideration to create a good looking and simple to maintain chicken house.

Wood

You will need some wood to construct a chicken coop. This is one of the most important materials you will need for the house of your chickens. Get treated wood that are proven to have water repellant properties. When you buy untreated wood, treat them with a water sealer. Just treat the wood following the instructions from the label. This is critical because you desire your chickens to remain dry. Dampness, which can be influenced by wood as the main material, will cause sickness and disease to spread more speedily. With treated wood, the dryness of the chicken coop is maintained.

Insulation

Always consider insulation as part of the required chicken coop materials. Chickens need to be maintained with enough warmth in the winter months. So supply superior insulation as an additional step. This will leave your chickens the additional protection when the temperature is quite cold. This will save most of your chickens from many illnesses prevalent during the winter months.

Windows

Windows which you can self install are very important. It is preferred that you have a good quality storm or insulated window. This will provide air to go through in the summer days while it will shut out the cold winds in the winter. This will insure the health of your chickens by providing a comfortable place during the hot summer season.

Chicken Wire

One of the essential chicken coop materials is the chicken wire. {The needed materials will basically be dependent on the number of chickens you plan to have}. The chicken wire will be used to construct the small run. You want to have plenty of chicken wire to bury it in the ground with at least eight inches in depth. Burying the chicken wire will make it unattainable for dogs or cats to crawl below the chicken wire to take at your chickens, saving the chickens this way. You will need to check as well that you place your chicken wire high enough so that these same animals will not climb over the wire and get your chickens.

Check out mychickenhouseplans.org for information on Chicken House Plans and designs.

For related topics to this posts, check out how to Efrontiers Everyday Magazine Blog for more reference. Also see Plans Chicken Coop for related articles.

chicken coop plans

You don’t want to forget this critical part of your chicken house plans.

Building from chicken house plans without nesting boxes is like building your own house without a bedroom.  Well, sort of.

You need nesting boxes for several reasons, the first being its importance to the chickens themselves.  The nesting box is that safe, comfortable place for the chicken to relax that is usually away from the light and in the shade.
A good rule is one nesting box for every three and up to five hens. When a hen is ready to lay an egg, she will search for that quiet, private place – something that is soothing and safe.  The nesting box fills this purpose and gives the chickens that safe, comfortable place to lay eggs.

Nesting boxes are not only beneficial to the chickens, but they are helpful for those folks who are raising chickens as well.Basically, it centralizes the area for egg production and keeps your chicken house organized.Without a nesting box, a hen will search around and lay her egg wherever she sees fit.Then you would have a real egg hunt when it was time to get eggs from your chicken house.  Another benefit for the chicken raising folks, nesting boxes makes it easier to collect the eggs and to determine freshness.You can determine the freshness of certain eggs because of the order and time you collect your eggs from the nesting boxes.

Fine, Now How Do You Make A Nesting Box?

Size is important to remember when making nesting boxes.  They need to be small enough for the chicken to feel safe and comfortable.However, you cannot make them so small that you can’t clean them.  A good sized nesting box is about one-foot square, but you can check with your local feed store or veterinarian for the breed of chickens that you are raising. 
For more on the design of the nesting boxes, read the rest of the article here for complete chicken house plans

chicken house plans

Chicken House Plans

There’s an old saying that goes about people . . . “don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.” (I believe that was Harvey MacKay). Same holds true for your Chicken House Plans. You want to have plans so that your baby chicks wil grow in a healthy, safe environment. There are as many reasons families want to raise chickens as there are people. In our particular family, we were given a “gift” of about a dozen baby chicks one fine Easter morning. I first thought, “oh no, what am I going to do with all these chickens???” However, I remembered another great saying “if life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” (I promise, no more quotes). I was not thinking of eating the little chicks, but the thought of low-cost eggs sounded like a great idea to me. I was reveling in the thought about how fun it would be — a family project to build a chicken house, and soon we would be enjoying our own organically fresh eggs. It was a one-time investment that if done correctly, it could pay off for years just in fresh eggs alone. So when you are looking for the best Chicken House Plans, consider these following steps in your plan. The first thing you need to plan is where you will locate your new chicken house. From this point, you will know what your limitations are. One thing to be mindful about is that a basic 4 by 8 foot structure. This makes it easy on the materials sides because most plywood and other materials come in 4 x 8 foot sheets. Secondly, you want to establish the frame for the chicken house play area. This can be done by attaching by nails or screws the bottom of four pieces together. (You really should use screws that you can drive with an electric screwdriver. This makes it easy to disassemble in case you ever need to move your chicken house; you can simply unscrew the wood and away you go!) When this is finished, you can secure two corner sections, consisting of two parts that make up each corner. With the framework finished, the play area can be closed off with chicken wire. Once your chicken house frame is done, you can begin witht the actual house. You would probably want to consider if you are installing some sort of chicken house door, and if so, where the location would be. For our family, it was better to put the door near the back nesting area, which helps with your egg hunts down the road. How you attach the door is going to be determined by what kind of door you would like. One idea that we used was a door near the nesting area, which opened upward. Our door had a long wooden dowel added to prop in the “up” position so we could easily access inside the chicken house. Next you should install the roof. Plywood (which comes in 4 x 8 foot sheets) is perfect for this, but you can check with your local lumbar supplier to see if your location requires a different type of building material. Once the roof is up you can move forward with the nesting area of your chicken house. Here, the size is going to depend on the number of chickens you want to raise. A basic 4 foot by 8 foot chicken house is probably enough room to raise 10 chickens. For our nesting area, we made two support from 4 foot sections attached on both sides of our frame to support the nesting box. With the support in place, you can build a basic nesting box out of plywood to place on this support system. The nesting area usually goes near a back wall away frorm the front entrance (and near that door location for eeasy acces to the eggs. In the front of your chicken house you want to cut an opening, much like the size of a small pet door, so that the chickens can access the chicken house play area. When you’re finished with your chicken house, make sure you sand all the rough edeges and corners smooth and safely cut or bend all chicken wire out of the way from harm. You also want to double check that no sharp edges of the chicken wire protrude and are either removed or bent in such a way that they will not harm the chickens. Ventilation and lighting are critical to your chicken’s health and welfare. You may want to have open sides that can be closed with hinged doors made of plywood. That way you can open the doors in the daytime hours for light and ventilation, and they can be closed in the evening or when you need to protect the chickens from bad weather. When it comes to chicken house floors, you have some options. Most folks use sawdust, but some farms and others have access to hay or use straw. Others even use sand at the bottop of their chicken house. Check with your local feed store or veterinarian to see what is the best material for the weather conditions in your area. Having a solid chicken house will provide your chickens with a safe, healthy environment where they can grow and prosper. For us, the kids enjoyed watching the chickens grow, and they loved getting the eggs for our breakfast table. Enjoy your flock of chickens, and make sure you consider these steps in your Chicken House Plans

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