Building A Chicken Coop, the Easy Way
There are thousands of coop plans, designs and ideas for different buildings people the world over use for housing chickens. They range from elaborate two story structures right on down to a small doghouse type dwelling surrounded by a few feet of chicken wire. Before you invest a lot of money and time setting up costly coops, learn about building chicken coops the easy way and you can enjoy the fruits of your labor sooner.
Chickens are not demanding critters. Their needs are pretty basic. They need a place to get in out of the elements where the freezing weather won’t harm their eggs or their extremities. Chickens can get frostbite on their combs, wattles and feet if exposed to extreme temperatures. Next on the list, they have to have space for their nests in order to lay and perhaps hatch eggs.
Since both eggs and chickens are considered tasty morsels by a wide variety of predators, the place built for chickens needs to be sturdy and well protected. Add a little food and water and they’re happy campers.
The Easy Chicken Coop
There are standard ways to build an easy chicken coop or you can create your own from scratch. Decide first how large the dimensions should be for the area of land you’ve set aside for your hens.
Take care not to put a chicken coop too close to your home for a couple of reasons. The noise can get pretty loud at times and downwind, a chicken coop doesn’t smell like roses. On the other hand, you don’t want to put the coop too far away either – both for the sake of convenience and so that you can keep an eye out for predators.
No matter how fancy you might want your coop, if you’re looking for was to build an easy chicken coop, never forget that it has to be cleaned out on a regular basis to cut down on odor and bug infestation. Easy to build, but also easy to clean should be a major consideration.
One of the mistakes those new to raising chickens do is they build coops where the floor is completely level. Isn’t that the way to build a house? Yes, but not a hen house – because when you go to wash it out, all of that stuff will pool right at your feet. Not a pretty thought or sight once that happens. Instead, you want to build the floor with a tilt or slight grade at the back of it.
Building a chicken coop the easy way includes an easy clean up. With a slightly tilted floor at the rear of the house, when you spray it down during cleaning, all that icky stuff will wash down the slant and right out the back door of the coop.
Finally, always remember to protect your chickens as they really are defenseless creatures. Put a chicken wire fence all around the coop to keep unwelcome guests out. Remember that some animals will dig beneath fences to get into the chicken coop, so you might consider burying the fence partly below the ground. (I don’t do this personally, but have known many people to do so.) Building an easy chicken coop makes the work of owning chickens practically trouble free for many years.
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