With the economy it is today, we need to do all we can to save money. Rearing chickens is an affordable alternative to shopping for eggs and meat. You will need to invest a little to get started, but you can have fresh eggs every day, and a nice chicken dinner once in a while. When selecting chickens, you must decide if you want them to breed or not. If you rely on chickens for meat, be sure to get one rooster per coop. Roosters are territorial and tend to fight other roosters.
Required Materials/Tools
- Sheets of plywood
- Chicken feeders
- Some straw
- A net
- Tape measure
- Nails
- A sledge hammer
Instructions
- First off, find a place that's big enough for the coop you want. Take a tape measure and work out how big you want the coop, as well as the space around it. We must keep the chickens corralled. The space needs to be a cool, dry spot, also make sure that the rain water will get soaked up. We don't want stagnation to be around the chickens, we need to consider about 10 ft of space.
- We need to design the coop. It needs to be big enough to walk in to collect eggs; you can have tiers so chickens can sit higher up, but provide a ramp since chickens can't fly. Build the coop near a power source. An outdoor plug is fine. We need to provide lighting and heating to the coop. Chickens need to be kept warm. Be sure to angle the roof so rain will run off. Angle the floor slightly so when you hose out the inside, the water will run out as well.
- When your design is finished, start the building process. Check with your local planning commission's office to see if your zone is allowed to build it. When everything is ready, follow the design you made and build it! I won't go into detail, since there are hundreds of permeations of design.
- After building the coop we need to create protection for the chickens. Use chicken wire and create a perimeter. Give the chickens plenty of space to run around. Don't forget to make a door for you. Just take some wire clamps, cut out a door way, add the clamps to one side, and some latches on the other side. We want to make the chicken wire secure, so add posts to wrap the wires around and keep the walls taught.
Tips/Warnings
- Make sure windows of the coop are created and are closable. During the cold season, we want the chickens warm, and summer time they need to be cool.
- Provide clean food and water every day.
- If raised for eggs, check the nests every day for fresh eggs.
- If raised for breeding, make sure you research breeding techniques to help grow healthy chicks!