If you are planning to build a Do It Yourself (DIY) chicken house for your backyard, here’s a couple of tips that you can use.

When preparing the flooring of the chicken coop, use dried straw. The chicken house should be littered at all time with straw six to eight inches deep. When it becomes wet or damps, the straw should be replaced. A fresh layer of straw should also be laid when the old straw is badly broken or full of droppings.

When dropping broad is used on the DIY chicken coop, it should be cleaned at least once a week. No doing do will lead to disease germs and the accumulation of mites.

Furthermore, if the bird droppings are not cleaned, the feet of the chicken become soiled hence causing large percentage of dirty eggs. In some severe cases, toxic gases are given off decaying manure.

If you want to keep your bantams healthy, the chicken housing should be thoroughly cleaned at least once a year. Use a 3 percent mixture of compound solution or cresol or a good stock dip to soak every part of the coop.

When raising chicken in your backyard, the most common poultry parasites are mites and lice. Usually you will find mites beneath the perches or in the corners of the nests rather than on the fowl’s body. The mites will only attach to the chicken’s body long enough to feed.

Mites can be killed easier by using a can of aerosol. The make sure you get all the mites, repeat the spraying process 2 or 3 times. This is in order to get rid of newly hatched mites.

Lice on the other hand are a bit tricky to handle. They spend most of their life on the chicken therefore are not affected by cleaning or spraying. To control lice, you may need dust baths, dust powers or blue ointment.

To get rid of lice on the birds, use a good lice powder which can be made by mixing 3 parts of gasoline with one part of cresol and gradually stirring in plaster of Paris or building cement to take up the moisture.

After drying, this mixture is ready for applying to mature fowls. The mixture should be applied thoroughly.

Homemade Chicken Coop Plans

Looking for a good chicken coop plan? If you are, check out Bill Keene’s Building a Chicken Coop Plan manual. The guide comes with a complete blueprint with step by step instructions. Click on the link below for more information.

==> Click here to visit Building a Chicken Coop now!

How much time should you allocate if you are planning to raise chicken at home?

What I am referring here is the actual time needed to take care of the daily chores.

Just like any other household pets such as dog, cat, gold fish or parakeet, you will need to allocate some time every day to take care of them.

To have bantams in your backyard, you begin by spending time preparing their living area such as the chicken coop and the grass for the birds to forage.

If you are good with hand tools, you can get a DIY chicken coop plan and then build the housing yourself. That will take you maybe one or two weekends.

To save time, you can just purchase a chicken coop off the selves. But doing so will cost you some money. It is a trade off if you want to get the birds in quickly.

The actual time you have to spend looking after the chicken ranges from 15 to 30 minutes in the morning or evening. Most probably you will spend longer because it is so much fun observing their antics.

If you use an automatic feeder or waterer, you may have to check on the flock once or twice a day. The feeder might get stuck or water spilled all over the chicken coop.

If you have hens laying eggs, you should check on them once a day to collect the eggs. Preferably do this in the morning and you’ll have fresh organic eggs for breakfast. It is best to design the chicken coop with easy access to make the eggs collection process fast and easy.

All in all, you don’t need a lot of time and attention on the chicken in your backyard. They are pretty self sufficient.

Make sure the chicken coop area is enclosed to keep predators such as dogs, cats, raccoons, large rats away from the birds.

There are many advantages of raising your own chicken at home. The best benefit of having your own chicken is the fresh organic eggs that you can gather every morning for breakfast.

But do you have what it takes to have a chicken coop with lots of bantams running in your backyard?

The following are 3 basic requirements anyone should have if they are planning to have poultry at their home.

1) Construction time.

Do you have time to build the chicken coop for the birds?

Building a functional chicken housing can take some time. You need to acquire a proper chicken coop plan and then finish the construction before you get the chicken.

Just like any home improvement job, you have to plan how much time you are willing to put into the project.

How’s your building skill?

Your knowledge on handling building material and experience will also determine how much time you have to devote to the project.

2) Preparing the right living space.

An adult full-sized chicken will need a minimum of 2 square feet of floor space for shelter. If the bird cannot go outside during cold climate, it needs at least 3 square feet of internal chicken coop space to run around.

Here’s a quick space estimate for 4 hens in your backyard. You need to have 2 feet by 4 feet and the outside pen another 2 feet by 6 feet so that your total space used would be 2 feet by 10 feet.

Obviously, if you have more chicken, the space required will increase. Make sure you have sufficient space for the chicken coop in your backyard.

3) Capital investment.

Finally, you need money buy the chicken. Rooster, hen and chicks are not really expensive. Unless you are planning to get the rare breeds, the budget to purchase the bantams are quite small.

Adult hens that are healthy and capable of laying eggs cost less than $10. Chicks of most breeds cost a few dollars only. If you have other friends breeding their own chickens at home, you may get the chicks for free.