The chicken house – an excursion from the requirements and several inspiration – farmcurious

Spring chicks have been in! But have you thought about where your ladies will live once they are fully feathered?

We explore the fundamental aspects of a chicken house and run and explain why are all necessary therefore we show some inspirational types of beautiful coops that others make.

Please join FARMcurious in welcoming Lisa Gasink, our fabulous new intern which week’s guest blogger. This publish is about creating a coop however, you can follow Lisa as she experiences all of the steps to owning chickens – from research, to creating a coop from recycled wood, to locating chicks – at her blog caliperks.blogspot.com.

Would you like to have chickens. Me too!

I embarked upon this adventure at the outset of Feb, researching in the nights in the evening, for fun on saturday, any spare time I’d. I thought about being as knowledgeable as you possibly can before really jumping directly into owning chickens, and especially before planning our coop and run.

My fiance Erik, originally reluctant, was eventually won over by my overwhelming enthusiasm for that project. I am sure you’re nodding. If I have learned one factor, it seems in many instances that certain person is more enthusiastic while another requires a little convincing.

Anyway, we survive the peninsula and our town only enables three hens however i would like them to possess a good existence. Oddly, I’d difficulty locating a singular place that listed all the requirements of chickens and what purpose each part actuallyserved and since we are building our coop ourselves I made the decision to compile everything into one blog publish.

Let us have a quick moment to examine what chickens have to live happy resides in backyards. Then we’ll proceed to some interesting coop designs with a local team in Oakland.

A coop You need to know that one.

This is the structure where the chickens is going to be guaranteed during the night so that they are somewhere safe from a lot of our huge neighborhood raccoons, feral cats, and then any other animal that may think a chicken will be a tasty late-night snack.

A specific run

This really is basically a pen – enclosed on every side in chicken wire, hardware cloth, or whatever product will safeguard the chickens from predators in the region. Be advised that, if you’re like us and also have large raccoons where you live, classic chicken wire might not be sufficiently strong. Take a look at the local home improvement store or pet & feed supply and speak with other chicken proprietors in your town.

The run could be full human height, they could be a couple of ft tall, whatever works best for your chickens, both you and your overall design. Erik and that i are intending to use hardware cloth (essentially galvanized wire that’s inside a 1/2″ x 1/2″ grid formation) due to the aforementioned huge raccoons within our ‘hood. We’ll develop a 6’ tall go to make cleaning simpler and also to allow our women to spread their wings to obtain as much as an outside roost. Our hens will be presented accessibility run all day long while we are at the office.

Sq footage per hen

This varies based on whom you ask: between two to four sq foot within the coop but for the run between 8 and 15 sq foot. Erik and i’ll develop a coop that gives each hen with ~4 sq foot of space inside, and eight sq foot within the run. Our hens may also be permitted to wander around our big backyard (that is fully fenced) within the nights before sundown and for fun on saturday when we are home. They’ll eat our weeds, eat some grass, search for snails, worms, etc.

Nesting Boxes This is when they’ll lay their eggs.

The overall recommendation is a nesting box per 3-4 hens. We’ll have 3 hens, per the city’s ordinances, but we will build two nesting boxes. (Explanation: when we ever expand our flock, building two nesting boxes now, when we are building the entire coop, could be simpler than attempting to retrofit another nesting box lower the street.)

The nesting box ought to be a minimum of 1 cubic feet, which is one of the size we’ll build. It’s suggested with an exterior door to gain access to the nesting boxes so it’s possible to collect eggs with minimal disruption towards the ladies.

Roosts

Within the wild, chickens fly up into trees to rest for that night. Roosts are basically a branch within the coop and, if that’s the case inclined, within the run. They’re typically made from 2″x2″, 2″x3″ or 2″x4″, or actual branches from trees. Apparently wooden dowels are extremely smooth for chicken ft to obtain good purchase. We’ll have a couple of roosts within the coop and a couple of outdoors within the run – I discovered 2″x2″ in the salvage warehouse, so we’ll use that!

Pop Door

This can be a little 1’x1′ door which goes in the coop into the run. We’ll get one!

Ventilation

Chickens are untidy and poop a great deal, so I have heard. To ensure that their environments to remain dry and free from disease, their spaces need a ton of ventilation. We’ll have lots of ventilation towards the top of the coop close to the roof and also the pop door is going to be open every single day as the women are in the run.

For humans quick access to wash the coop and run

Erik and that i have designed two big doorways right in front in our coop to match quick access to any or all areas of the coop to clean and maintenance in addition to easy accessibility women, in situation there’s any risk. And again, why we are creating a tall run – easy to go into and rake it clean, etc.

Now onto design inspirations!

The Vacation Cabin

I had been initially inspired by Reinventing the Chicken House. This option are actually approaching coops having a fresh eye – an enjoyable twist on classic designs, designs that fit into urban lifestyles, tree houses for chickens. Our three favorites are Vacation Cabin Coop, Chick-in-a-Box and Coopsicle. At some point we’ll build one of these simple.

Realistically, we understood this primary design, the Vacation Cabin Coop, just should not be our first coop – that needs lots of notching, people! But, I really like the idea so we both love the barn style door and also the sliding door in the nesting box, along with the skylight they produced with obvious corrugated roofing.

Regrettably our coop (a minimum of this primary one!) won’t have the barn door or even the skylight, and can have in all probability the sliding door in the nesting box (where we retrieve the eggs) and also the pop door (in which the hens will access their run).

Chick-in-a-Box

Chick-in-a-Box looks so airy and open – I really like all of the ventilation and also the inverted roof to capture rain water for that hens. However it concerned me a bit – this winter season, we’d freezing temperatures. Now, we are preparing to get hens which will work in cooler weather, but we still wish to make certain we offer a hot place and rut to allow them to sleep during the night.

Chick-in-a-Box might have needed storing procuring paneling to pay for all of the open sides, although we’re able to have redesigned it with increased enclosed sides. Our takeaway was incorporating much more ventilation within our final design having seen this design.

The Coopsicle just looks rad What chicken does not want to reside in a tree house!?

I like the ends position out a little (you cannot tell out of this photo) however i mostly love the spiral staircase and all sorts of home windows. The down-side for all of us would be that the central 4″x4″ needs to be dug inside a couple of ft, and hang along with concrete.

Considering that we do not own our current house, we would like a structure that’s a little simpler to maneuver around, whenever which may be. Sadly we will not possess a spiral staircase within our final design, but we did incorporate home windows, which we most likely will not have otherwise incorporated.

Once I go through Reinventing the Chicken Coop (that these photos came), I began searching at “regular people’s” designs on Backyard Chickens.And wow, many people build some really awesome coops! The Hennebunkport (best name since I am from Kennebunkport, Maine! I actually want to determine if this individual really resides in Kennebunkport), the Mid-Life Crisis, yet others provided plenty of ideas.Then, in some way, I came across Heather Bullard’s blog post about the coop she and her husband designed and built (tho she freely states, he will get all of the build credit).

The Kentucky

Now, my pal nicknamed that one The Kentucky – that is things i now refer to it as within my mind. I really like a great deal relating to this coop – clean lines, space for storage for feed and shavings, a run made to seem like area of the overall design, along with a great focus on detail. After I initially discovered this, I didn’t understand that Louise is really a adding editor a couple of different magazines, a professional photographer, the whole shebang.

After I determined that part out, it had been no real surprise that her family’s coop is that this lovely. The down-side of the design, for all of us (because she really had the coop designs attracted up by a designer and they are for purchase) is this fact is positioned on the concrete footing (remember after i stated when we move, the coop needs to move?), are more expensive than $1000 to construct, and her husband is clearly an expert carpenter, a minimum of by hobby – the conclusion focus on this coop is gorgeous.

It provided Plenty of plans for the coop and run! I will be posting more about our coop-building along with other chicken adventures on caliperks.blogspot.com.  Check there for additional info on our foray into coop design, building, and, eventually, our chicks.

You can monitor us once we undergo all of the steps to owning chickens – from research, to creating a coop from recycled wood, to locating chicks!

Much more about Lisa Gasink:

Lisa Gasink is really a Maine native who found the San Francisco Bay Area greater than a decade ago to go to Stanford College. She can’t appear to return to Colonial…the San Francisco Bay Area just keeps its warm, sunny grip on her behalf. She’s presently obsessive about everything chicken and spends her free time volunteering with FARMcurious. After her wedding in May she’ll have more spare time so she’s going to need to get a couple of more obsessions. Cheese-making, anybody?

A tour of my organic vegetable garden and the chicken house

Video COMMENTS:

Christopher Johnson: what a nice girl and garden wish i had some land .cant wait to get out of the city

Hobo 2.o: Same here

David Phung: Very lovely garden tour! Thank you for sharing. I’ve never seen dogs eat raw squash and actually enjoy it so that was neat to see. Happy gardening!

Ed Dex: Your awesome I hope that kids now these days can get an understanding that food can be grown and not dependent on supermarkets..we need america to wake up from all the bs that they teach our children to depend on them rather than they learn the wonderful things that you have learned..it.makes me cery sad that I was not able to afford this because this tyle of information was not so readily available to me at the time..but I will try to make a statement to the new generation tonot depend on anyone and to be able to understand the benefits of learning how to grow food…because that the more they depend.on food they can buy in the store tge more they willbe blinded by others to make money off on themwill be depremental to their survival

Jordan Jordan: You have a very nice garden and what a beautiful young lady you are, Thank you for sharing

Ed Dex: Thank you for the heads back …I have been down…WHERE I could plant a health cabinet now I cant..life has hit me like a canned wall

styx ga: Sexy gardener😚😚😚😚😚😚

Babylon Gate: I never seen a dog eat squash before.

jus4funtim: Why did you leave us hanging @ with no explanation of why the dogs yelped???

firstimpressions: It was the cat!

Tags: chicken

Comments are closed here.