hen houses – 4 Critical Errors to Avoid When Building Chicken Coops Or Hen Houses

  

When I first started building chicken coops many years ago I made my share of mistakes. My very first chicken coop was built in an area with poor drainage, making it unacceptably muddy whenever it rained. Not only were the chickens less healthy, but the eggs were always dirty and needed washing. It was also about 5 times larger than necessary which made it 5 times as expensive to build.

Nevertheless, through trial and error, it was not long before I was building chicken coops that were cheap and trouble-free to maintain. I was having so much fun I started raising a lot of unique breeds of chickens, hatching eggs in incubators that my own chickens had laid. Plus, I started raising other varieties of birds including turkey, guinea, quail, duck, and a number of others. Constructing well-designed and functional hen houses turned my hobby upside down; it became lots of fun. If you expect to reap some rewards from your new hobby, do things properly on your initial try and circumvent critical beginner mistakes.

Mistake #1: Not Properly Planning Ahead

With a little advanced planning you will boost the odds of ending up with an enjoyable hobby. At a minimum you must sketch a rough diagram of how your hen house will look. You will ideally include where the doors, walls, windows, poultry feeders, poultry nests, and water fountains will be positioned. By developing as meticulous of a diagram as you are capable, including measurements and proportions, you can accurately estimate the amount of wood, wire, and other supplies that will be needed for the job. Money will be wasted if you buy too many supplies.

When coming to a decision about where to situate specific items in your poultry house, try to position them in areas that will be most handy for you. For example, building a small hinged door in the right spot will make egg gathering a quick job. Build the poultry nests on a wall with a tiny outside-accessible door just a bit above the height of the poultry nests. Building coops in this fashion will permit you to gather fresh eggs from the outside without having to enter.

Try to employ a plan where the chicken shed is two feet above the ground with chicken wire for the flooring. This will permit the chicken droppings to drop through the wire flooring as a substitute to building up within their home. It will eliminate the necessity of constant cleaning and keep the poultry away from their droppings.

Mistake #2: Not Building the Chicken Coop in a Good Location

One of the most universal mistakes is building chicken coops in inferior backyard places. Selecting an inferior backyard place can cause diseased and unproductive hens. The hen house ought to be where there is great drainage. Lacking adequate drainage you can end up with a concoction of muddy water and droppings. Ingesting this dirty water or tracking it into the nest and feed area will most likely have the consequence of a smaller number of eggs, health disorders, and even fatalities among the flock.

The chicken housing should be built in the vicinity of an easily accessible water supply. This will allow you to add simple automatic watering practices and eliminate the need for you to provide fresh water each day.

Mistake #3: Not Providing Enough Light

Hens should have at least 14 hours of sunlight per day to lay eggs dependably, so locate your chicken housing facing south for the greatest sun exposure. Furthermore, it will keep the chicken housing drier which will help it stay cleaner. If you are planning to gather fresh organic eggs throughout the times of the year where there are fewer than 14 hours of sun per day you will have to provide artificial lighting using low-wattage light bulbs. Placing your chicken shed near an available electrical supply is helpful in these situations.

Mistake #4: Not Providing Proper Ventilation

Without windows or openings there will be inferior ventilation. Chicken droppings are the source of strong and unpleasant odors that are damaging to their physical health if permitted to build up. At least one window, but if at all possible two, will be positioned in areas that will permit suitable air circulation. With better ventilation the chicken shed will stay drier, and therefore cleaner, which will usually help prevent diseases.

Joshua has raised fowl for over 25 years and has manufactured all of his own chicken houses throughout those years. He is an authority in successfully growing poultry for meat and eggs. He keeps a site chock-full of useful information in relation to building chicken coops, successfully keeping poultry, and more.

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You have chosen to grow chickens to provide freshly grown eggs for the family. To successfully raise chickens you should build some housing for your hens. But which sort of chicken housing will ideally suit your needs? Before you start purchasing timber, wire, and nails to make your chicken coops or chicken arks, you must learn the major differences between them. Each has their own unique advantages, but it’s probable that only one will ideally serve your particular situation. You certainly don’t want to manufacture a chicken coop and then realize soon after that a chicken tractor would have suited your purposes better.

Hen house, chicken ark, and chicken coop are used interchangeably by a lot of people, but this is inaccurate. Chicken coops and hen houses are indistinguishable, but a chicken ark, also accepted as a chicken tractor, is a variety of structure different from the others. Hen Houses are constructed and put in a permanent site. After being manufactured, they are never moved. A chicken tractor, on the other hand, is a transportable hen house. It can be easily transported to a new location in the yard whenever it’s necessary.

The Benefits for constructing a Chicken Ark

Chicken arks are very small, making them very economical and painless to construct. You can make an entire chicken tractor in one single afternoon without spending a great deal of cash. However, the most important benefit is the fact that it is transportable. With transportability come a lot of advantages.

In view of the fact that portable tractors use the ground as their flooring your flock of chickens can hunt and peck for some of their own food. This will provide them with real living meals that they can’t get in a premixed feed, helping them to stay happier and healthier. It will also decrease your feed expenses. Once one area has been picked clean of plants and insect life, it’s a simple matter to relocate the tractor to a brand new area possessing new succulent plants, grasses, and insect life. Cleanup is also easy because there isn’t any cleanup. As soon as you reposition the house to a different locale nature will clean up the old area for you.

The Benefits of creating Hen Houses

If you plan on successfully growing a dozen chickens or more you will most likely need to manufacture hen houses. These are larger structures than arks and will hold a great deal more birds. If you want to turn out a large amount of eggs a hen house will make it possible for you to do that.

If manufactured properly you will do away with some additional effort. Locating it next to a water source will permit you to install an automated watering system, halting the need to change the water each and every day. With a tractor, the water fountain should be changed every day. The poultry feeders can be much bigger, so it’s possible to go weeks without needing to add feed.

Nests can be situated to permit easy gathering of eggs. You can even erect houses that will allow you to gather eggs from the exterior. Moreover, you will not need to drag it to different sites as you will with a tractor. With a chicken tractor, since the soil is the flooring, you will be required to drag the poultry feeders and water fountains separately from the poultry housing itself. It’s quite simple to do, but it’s one task that does not need to be performed with permanent poultry housing.

You may possibly imagine that cleaning up would be a significant job with a bigger house, but constructing a hen house a foot or two off the earth, using wire as the flooring, will remove the necessity of clean-up. All of the bird droppings will drop underneath the coop, so the inner area can stay clean.

Both chicken arks and chicken coops have own unique advantages and disadvantages. An ark is less costly and less time-consuming to erect, offer living food to the birds, and eliminate cleanup. A bigger hen house will allow the birds additional room, require less work with feeding and watering, and if manufactured correctly, eliminate the job of cleaning.

About The Author

Joshua has successfully kept poultry for more than 25 years and has accumulated a significant amount of knowledge on the subject matter. He is proficient in growing poultry for egg and meat production. He keeps an instructional website where you can obtain free information about making an inexpensive chicken ark, successfully growing poultry, how to determine the ideal location for your chicken coops, and more.

How To Build A Chicken Coop Guide

Building chicken coops can be an adventurous experience, but remember your fun and excitement should not ruin your chickens. People often love to keep chickens, its not only fun to watch them grow, but you also get a huge supply of fresh eggs regularly. Moreover, you will appreciate yourself to provide a cozy shelter for these little ones to live comfortably. So, now you are excited to build a perfect chicken coop. Before you build a chicken coop, you need to be careful about a few things to ensure maximum comfort and safety for your delicate, fluffy chickens.

- Size: Firstly, while building a chicken coop, you need to think about the size of the chicken coop. The size plays a major role for proper growth of your chickens. It solely depends on the number of chicken you plan to keep. The chicken coop should be of comfortable size where the chicks can roam around freely, yet feel secured. If you build a smaller chicken coop, chances are that your chickens may not be able to grow properly as they may not feel comfortable, at times they may feel suffocated too. Remember, your chickens are free birds so they need enough space to enjoy their freedom. Moreover, your chicken will grow in future, so the height of chicken coop in another important factor to be considered while building a chicken coop.
- Safety of your Chickens: You need to think about the safety measures for your chickens. You need to save them from predators as it your responsibility to take care of the little ones. You must see that the chicken coop you build must be safe and secured for your chicken and no predator can attack it and cause harm to your lovely chickens.
- Maintenance: The chicken coop you build should be easy to maintain. The little chickens are going to litter around. So it must be easy to clean regularly. Cleanliness is utmost important so as to prevent any diseases or illness spreading in your chickens. Design a chicken coop that is wide and easy to clean, also ensure that the water and disinfectant used to clean the chicken coop should drain away easily rather than getting trapped in the center of the coop.
- Bright and warm with proper ventilation: The next thing to be considered while building a chicken coop is that it should be bright as well as cozy. Proper ventilation is a pre-requisite and all these things are essential to prevent any sickness that may harm yo
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ur chickens. Your chicken coop should be warm and dry in cold and wet seasons, and it should be airy during the hot season. This will keep diseases at bay and your chickens can enjoy living in a chicken coop built by you.

To get a better idea about How To Build a Chicken Coop Guide, there are several online stores presenting a complete guide to help at every step to build a perfect chicken coop. Remember, you are taking a responsibility of nurturing a LIFE of an innocent bird, so assure that you take all the precautionary measures to ensure their safety and wellbeing.

By: Jamie Hanson

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