First Coast Pet

Posts Tagged ‘Designs of chicken coop’

There are many different ideas out there relating to chicken coop designs. If you do your research, you will find a plethora of choices to pick from. This can be both overwhelming and confusing so it is good to know what your situation is right off the bat. Some may just want fresh, organic chicken eggs in their own backyard without having to go to the local health food store to buy them. Others may actually want to eat and sell the eggs that their hens produce. No matter which category you fall under, you certainly have many chicken coop designs at your disposal.

When you design your coop you should keep in mind the following ideas:

Give your birds space to run around. Chicken will be very happy to run around so remember to have enough space for them to run around.

Give your chickens enough places to lay their eggs. Remember that there should be one nesting box allocated for every three chickens. They won’t mind sharing as long as they remain comfortable.

Build a good coop with doors. Remember to have door big enough to let you access the coop to collect eggs, feed the chickens and clean the area. Your coop should have 2 doors. One door for you to enter the coop for cleaning or gathering eggs and one door for the chicken to exit the coop with a ramp.

Always give your chicken some lights. Have a small bulb lit on in your chicken coop to keep the chicken warm and comfortable then the chicken will produce plenty of eggs for you.

Though some chicken coop designs can be a so overwhelming to make bear in mind that if you have proper training then it can be overcome. You can build a good chicken coop easily if you have the right chicken coop designs!

Chickens and all the other animals need water to survive. There are many options you can select from when watering your feathered friends, and as with anything, there are good decisions and bad decisions. Let’s consider the best ways to give water to your chickens, of course, youll have to do it in anyway since water is a necessity for your chickens.

It is important to have a clean water supply near the coop, and the best way to do that, is to have a hose near the coop. Some people who have big chicken coops will want to install a faucet or actual sink inside the coop. As far as chicken coop designs go, that setup is fairly sound since you won’t have to trudge across the yard several times just to get water. If you really feel like it, you could even install a water filtration device to ensure that your chickens get only the best water.

Giving adequate water to your chickens can either be simple or complicated. There are some who would purchase a watering device and some would just put a tub of water in the coop. The watering devices consist of a silo-like body that contains water. It has a trough surrounding it to which the water is delivered, and the chickens are able to partake of it. The water is ejected through a hole and kept from flooding out. These containers can be of any size depending on the number of chickens that you have who will use the containers. Remember that if you get one that is too small, the chickens will drink it fast and you’ll end up having to refill it constantly. They may be small, but they really can drink a lot.

A much more interesting delivery system, and one that will take a lot of time and money as far as chicken coop designs go, would be an intricate waterworks system. The system would consist of pipes to a watering bowl and a large water tank. Such systems are usually homemade and expensive to implement. These are however, a good way to water your chickens, as you can have a huge water supply stored outside the coop.

The final thing you need to consider, is whether or not you’ll have the water on the ground. If you put the watering bowl in the ground you’ll have few problems. The first issue, is that chickens are barely conscious of there they use the bathroom. This means that they could do it on the ground, or just as easily in their water supply, therefore by having the water supply high up, you’ll stop them from soiling their water. The other problem is that chickens like to scratch, and if you have bedding in their coop, they’ll probably scrape all the bedding into their water trough. Once again, having the trough high up will solve this issue, and is one of the best chicken coop designs you can come up with.

Portable chicken coop designs are perfect when you have just a few hens that you want to move around your yard. Also known as chicken tractors, these little coops have a small area for roosting, eating, drinking, laying eggs and foraging. Since the coop is moved every few days to a week, your chickens are getting plenty of grass and bugs to supplement their diet.

You may wonder why you would want a portable chicken coop design. Moving the chickens around keeps them safe and secure while giving them new foraging grounds. They can be moved about the yard to eat grass, bugs and add their droppings to your yard for fertilizer. You can even move some of them onto garden areas at the end of the season so your chickens can glean anything leftover from harvest. They can also be used as fertilizers to your garden. The droppings will decompose over the winter, leaving your spring garden ready to grow more luscious produce for you the next season. In less than a week, with chicken that are not moved around, your backyard can be surprisingly reduced to bare earth. Then, it becomes a muddy every time it rains, and your chickens don’t get all that nutritious greenery to eat.

An easy chicken coop design that is portable is the ark. This is an A-frame that is triangular pen with wide base at the bottom and peak at the top. The ark can be made small or large. The only thing that should limit you for size is whether you can move it or not. The two-thirds of the ark is for outdoor run and one-third of it would be the coop. The coop should hold nest boxes and perches. A small opening lets the chickens out into the run. A larger door on the opposite side of the coop lets you in to gather eggs, feed the birds and clean out the coop. The chicken run has a door at the end so you can easily access. Arks can be moved by attaching long poles so two people can lift and move it, or they can be hooked up to a vehicle and towed.

Another A-frame type portable chicken coop design has the coop in the top third of the A-frame and the chicken run beneath it. The coop provides shade this way, and the chickens are able to sleep up off the ground in a protected area. Small doors at each end will allow you to clean and gather eggs conveniently. These coops are generally built to house two to four hens and are moved by hand.

Small portable chicken coop designs can also be imaginative. Build a chicken coop that has wheels for easy moving and so it can be moved even with a single person.

Portable chicken coop runs can be made from wire and PVC. You can even use a dog house as the coop itself with a few modifications to make it easy to access for egg gathering and cleaning.