Preparing a DIY Backyard Chicken House

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.

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