When I speak to my friends about raising chicken at home, most of them will look at me in amazement. They have never thought of keeping chickens as pets. I don’t blame them. We are living in the urban area. Most people will prefer to have a dog, cat, goldfish, hamster etc as pets, but seldom chickens.

Chickens actually can be excellent household pets. They are very low maintenance and easy to care for. There is one key difference between chicken and any other house pets, the hen can lay fresh organic eggs.

A healthy hen is capable of laying up to 2 eggs a week. Imagine if you were to raise 10 hens, they eggs that the birds produce will be more than enough for your family consumption. No more trips to the grocery store for eggs. That will save you a lot of money on the long run.

Keeping The Chicken Safe

Compared with other animals, chicken are generally small in size. Even in the urban area, they are constantly exposed to urban predators such as dogs, cats, large rats, raccoons etc.

To keep them safe, you should make a chicken coop for them to live in. What are the common chicken coop designs? How about a chicken tractor?

A chicken tractor is a very basic chicken coop design. Usually a chicken tractor is made of wood. There is the living area for the birds and also an enclosed foraging space.

Usually, there is no base floor for a chicken tractor. This is good because it gives the birds access to grass on the ground so they can hunt for insects.

There is one additional feature for most chicken tractors, they are movable. Usually, chicken tractors are made with a set of wheel at the end. This makes it very easy to move.

Why would you want to move the chicken housing?

Well, firstly, to spread the chick poop around to control the odor. This is actually a good thing. Bantam droppings are great natural fertilizer. When used on the ground, the soil will be very fertile to grow all kind of plants.

Secondly, when you move the chicken tractor, you also give the birds access to fresh grass and new area to forage for bugs and insects.

It also gives some breathing room for the grass to recover and grow after being stepped on by the chickens.

How often should you move the chicken tractor?

One or twice a week will be sufficient. Chickens are not very demanding. As long as they have food and water, they are more than happy to mind their own business. This is why I love keeping chickens at home.

Building Your Own Chicken Coop

Do you want to know how to building your own chicken house? If you do, check out Bill Keene’s Building A Chicken Coop manual. The e-book will show you easy instructions on how to build your own chicken coop.

To know more, read the comprehensive Building A Chicken Coop review on the main web site.

==> Click here to read more about Building A Chicken Coop now!

Related web sites:
1) Easy Chicken Coop Plans – Keeping Your Chicken Safe and Healthy with a DIY Backyard Chicken Coop

2) Chicken Coops For Sale In North America

3) Keeping chickens

4) Raising Your Own City Chickens

5) Raising Chickens, The First 60 Days

There are many benefits of raising your own chickens at home. One of the main advantage is the fresh organic eggs laid by the hen. A healthy hen can lay up to 2 eggs every week. Imagine if you have a dozen hens, the eggs produced will be more than enough for your household consumption.

Unfortunately, due to their small size, chicken are exposed to predators such as dogs, cats, large rats, raccoons, foxes etc. To keep them safe, you should build a chicken coop for the birds to live in. One particular chicken coop design is the chicken tractor.

A chicken tractor is simply a portable chicken coop. It provides shelter for the chicken and shield them from both extreme heat and cold weather. It also give the chicken access to grass on the ground for them to forage.

Because a chicken tractor is movable, you can shift it to a new location every other week. This will give the chicken access to fresh grass for grazing and insect hunting. It will also give the grass room to recover after being constantly trampled on.

In addition, moving the chicken tractor will also spread the birds dropping. This is important to keep your backyard clean and for odor control. The chicken droppings can also act as organic fertilizer for your lawn. Moving the chicken tractor will spread them around for better ground coverage.

I found a video on Youtube of a chicken tractor in action. It is from GardenEggs.com. Check them out for plans to build your own backyard chicken tractor.

Related web sites:
1) Easy Chicken Coop Plans Review

2) Chicken Coops For Sale In North America

3) Easy Chicken Nesting Boxes

Chicken Coop Plans for our DIY Backyard Chicken Coop

For the last six months, we have started to raise some chickens on our backyard. My little daughter wanted to have a pet and my husband suggested to get some chickens.

I laughed at him at first. Chickens as pet? He must be joking! After a chat with him, we decided to get a couple of chicks to try it out. My daughter was ecstatic seeming all the cute yellow chicks running around.

After a few days, we realize the chicks were getting less and less in numbers. We didn’t know what happened at first, but then another one got missing the next day.

The chicks were left in an opened box in our backyard under the shades. Apparently, we have a predator. It was a cat!

A neighbor’s cat has been coming into our backyard and killing our chicks. We didn’t dare telling our daughter what happened or it will break her little heart.

I told my husband we have got to do something about it.

Should we get a dog to guard against the cat?

But wouldn’t the dog endangered the chicks also? In the end, we decided to build a chicken shelter for them. We were going to make a backyard chicken coop.

I was very excited about the idea of having a DIY chicken coop project for the family. I started to so some research. My husband wanted to get started right away.

Knowing him, he will start hammering wooden planks together and it will be an unsightly result. On the other hand, I wanted to get a chicken coop plans first. So I’m off to the web!

There were quite a lot of material on the internet about chicken coop plans. Some look small and simple while some look rather complicated.

I managed to download some chicken coop designs from the web, but the quality was not very good and we couldn’t see the blueprint.

In the end, I managed to stumble upon on an e-book “Building a Chicken Coop” by Bill Keene. The price was pretty reasonable so I decided to buy it.

Next, I’ll write more on our little DIY backyard chicken coop project. Here’s Bill Keene’s e-book that I bought, have a look yourself:

==> Bill Keene’s “Building a Chicken Coop” plans