Keeping chickens/ coop design

Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 08:24

 Keeping Chickens 101

Today, my topic will be housing for a flock of chickens. Housing does not have to be fancy. We just have a simple pen that was here on the place when we moved here. It was originally used for keeping roosters but it has nesting boxes in it and it works. Our pen is approximately 10 ft. long by about 3 ft. wide. It stands about 4 to 5 ft. high and is about 3 ft. off the ground. So in the heat of the day they can get up under their house with no trouble. It is constructed of lumber for the sides, bottom, doors, and tin for the roof. We added some rods for them to perch on. We have made them a fairly large chicken run. We also let them free range from time to time. Free ranging is the most healthy form of egg laying but my chickens tend to come up and eat the dog food when they are free ranging. So we don’t let them do it all of the time.

Her are some specs on how many chickens you would need per sq. ft. and so on.

Birds need adequate space for movement and exercise as well as areas to nest and roost. Space requirements vary with the type of bird you raise.

Adequate Space:

Minimum Space Requirements
Type of Bird	Sq ft/bird inside	Sq ft/bird outside runs
Bantam Chickens Laying Hens Large Chickens Quail Pheasant Ducks Geese	1 1.5 2 1 5 3 6	4 8 10 4 25 15 18

We have 3 nesting boxes for 10 hens and it seems like they all use the same box.LOL

My ideal chicken set up would be a chicken coop in the middle of two very large chicken runs. I would rotate the runs that they would use from year to year. I would have the chickens on one side and a garden on the other. I would rotate this situation yearly. That way they could cleanup my garden area, as well as fertilize my soil. This would be the ideal use of chickens!

Here are some great sites for chicken coop pictures:

http://backyardchickens.com/ (and all time favorite, check out that poulet chalet)

http://www.instructables.com/id/Backyard-Chicken-Coop/

http://www.rosecomb.com/random/coops/coops.

htmlhttp://www.mypetchicken.com/  

This is just a starter. The web has every type of chicken condo you could imagine.

Trixi Spencer is a wife of 17 ½ years and mother to three home schooled children. We live on a small acreage in Ms. where we keep chickens and horses. I am a saved by grace follower of Jesus Christ who enjoys sewing, cooking from scratch, gardening, putting food by, raising animals, and all the things of an era gone by. We love life and all that it has to offer.

Chickens :)

Posted by darbyfamily on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 07:33 - Link

Hey Trixie,

thanks for your comment on my blog. We love our cochins, ... friendly, easy to manage, never aggressive, not even the roosters. They are good layers, though the 'chick chart' we often refer to says they lay small eggs, we've found ours to be med-large to large size eggs. They do go broody sometimes, but if you like hatching eggs, then thats kind of a fun thing.

They taper off in the winter, as most breeds do, but we're just kinda used to it.

They're just hilarious fun to watch. They remind us of 'clucky' ... Maid Marions lady in waiting on disneys robin hood.... when she held up her skirts and ran, thats how the cochins look when they run :)

here's our favorite reference for chicken information...
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

Blessings!
Jennifer

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