Is it difficult to build your own chicken coop in your backyard? If you are good with hand tools and able to read a building plans, it is actually quite easy.

Although many people do purchase chicken shelters that are pre-made, not all varieties of it are well-made, indeed, a great deal are actually dangerous for your chickens due to shoddy construction methods and building material.

Some require a lot of maintenance, which, although even with the best ones some care will have to be taken to ensure it’s safe for your chickens, is a bit excessive as the entire goal of a chicken coop is to keep them safe.

One feature that a lot of low-quality chicken coops have is that they often are difficult to clean out, with lots of nooks and crannies that feathers, sawdust, all kinds of things you’d expect in a coop, could get stuck in.

Others can be just plain tricky to get the chickens out without distressing them, partially because they’re too close to each other in the coop, but also because generally there’s no space between them and everything else, causing some of the effects that you see with factory chickens. Some readymade units have a weaker wire mesh, or even one with larger gaps between wires.

This is terrible, as it means that predators, especially cats, which can squeeze themselves through quite tight spaces, rather like what is commonly known for rats. If you decide to purchase housing, you need to consider a lot of things.

Firstly, do you want a cage system, or a shelter and run? Do you want a separate area for them to roost? Do you want somewhere specific for your laying hens to nest? A shed for your free range chickens to use as shelter, as it’d be bigger?

One of the better ideas that a lot of pre-fabricated chicken shelter manufacturers have produced is that of a slide-out door underneath the roosting area, which is sensible as the majority of manure collects underneath this area, meaning that you could more easily dispose or reuse the manure as fertilizer. Like with a human dwelling, one must always check all the features of the house you are considering purchasing.

DIY Chicken Coop Design Guide

Here’s a suggestion, if you are good with hand tools, why not build your own chicken housing rather than buying a readymade one? Do you want to know how to build a poultry housing in your back yard?

If you do, check out the Building A Chicken Coop plans by Bill Keene. Bill is an seasoned chicken farmer with more than 20 years experience.

His DIY chicken coop plans was created to teach you how to build a small, medium and also large chicken coop on a shoestring budget. For more information, click on the link below and see what Bill has to offer.

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

For anyone who’s planning on designing and building their personal chicken coop, there are a few imperative particulars to consider. As long as you have the fundamental idea of what you’re doing and take time to perfect your plan ahead of starting to construct it, your chicken house should turn out excellent.

Obviously before you can initiate constructing anything, you are required to have the plan of the DIY chicken coop which is the toughest branch. One of the foremost and most significant verdicts you need to make is how much square footage you’re going to necessitate for the coop.

Certainly this resolution should be mainly based on the quantity of chickens you have in the coop. It should be of smaller dimension but hefty enough that the chickens will have space to sprint around in and won’t be compressed up against each other.

Lighting is also vital on any DIY chicken house. Lighting is also important for any DIY chicken coop project, and one of the finest proposals is to have the lighting installed with a timer.

Lighting is imperative in chicken coops, particularly during wintry weather months, because it facilitates with egg production and will moreover keep the chickens warmer at night.

Even just a couple of lights fixed in the eaves of the coop will be adequate and by having them set on a timer they’ll switch off automatically. This will also work well to help you to save on your home energy expenditure and lend a hand with egg production during the chilly months.

A built-in heater or supplementary aesthetics can be predominantly essential depending on your preference. If you are staying in a metropolitan region, there are a small number of extra features that can be fitted.

While in more rustic areas, this is not such a matter of concern. But if you’re residing in or near a town and the birds were to flee, you wouldn’t want them to wind up on the thoroughfare and get knocked over by a car.

The quantity of nest containers you should posses per hen is ideally five. Keep them about ten inches spaced out as this will offer the hens satisfactory space to perch.

Roosters don’t like to be kept too close when they’re perching and having a sizable gap amid them will keep them from fighting. You should keep the roosters at least two feet away from each other.

Even though building your own DIY chicken coop is somewhat new to you, you can construct a homemade poultry coop in just a couple of days. Constructing a DIY chicken coop can be pretty simple if you set out a well thought-out, comprehensive sketch for yourself.

DIY Chicken Coop Design Guide

Do you want to know how to build a poultry housing in your back yard?

If you do, check out the Building A Chicken Coop manual by Bill Keene. Bill is an seasoned chicken farmer with more than 20 years experience.

His guide was written to teach you how to build a small, medium and also large chicken coop on a shoestring budget. For more information, click on the link below and see what Bill has to offer.

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

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!