Chicken Coops for Sale in Hurtsboro, Alabama
Chicken Coops for Sale in Hurtsboro, Alabama
Eggs! Raise Your Own Hens In A Chicken Coop Built From Scrap
From a long line of egg farmers in Holland, Karin’s dad finally builds her a chicken coop
Where bylaws allow, or can be bypassed, I highly recommend building your own chicken coop. Imagine getting fresh, free-range organic eggs every day? When my parents came to visit me in Jaffa a few months ago, Dad found himself bored. Back in Holland, my family the Van Der Meers were one of the biggest egg producers in the country before the Depression. So you could say, eggs are in our genes. With Dad nothing to do for a few weeks, I brought up the idea of having him build me a chicken coop. That got him kind of excited. He foraged for wood in my backyard and came up with a coop that resembles a bus stop. The Chicken Express? Step right up and I’ll tell you how to build a coop in a few easy steps. And no you don’t have to invest much, unless you want to make your coop designer.
In warm climates very little is needed to keep your hens happy – basically a roof over their heads, a lengthwise pole for curling their toes around when they sleep at night (you might want to raise it high where feral cats might stalk your chickens), and some fencing to keep them from, well, flying the coop.
Here are our chickens before we bought them.
As it turns out, Bedouin chickens which we bought in the Negev Desert, are very agile creatures and even sleep in our blackberry tree some nights. The fencing doesn’t help them that much, but it does keep them contained somewhat, and out of the mouth of our crazy dog.
Here’s what you’ll need to build the coop:
- A corner on your roof, garden, or backyard for the chicken coop, a couple meters by a couple meters at least
- An old door or piece of plywood for a roof
- Some plywood for the sides
- Chicken wire, if you want to contain the chickens outside the coop (they eat weeds so consider letting them run loose)
- A wooden pole
- Some boxes, or crates for roosting. Throw in something soft.
- Feed
Find a corner to build against, saving yourself the need to build 2 extra walls. Be lazy. Make sure there’s a roof for the chickens to protect them against the sun, and rain, and in the winter if it gets cold, you can throw a carpet over the sides to keep the cold wind out. Make sure they have three walls.
We built a 2 meter or so pole, installed horizontally, down low about 50 cm off the ground but noticed some street cats were preying on our hens and raised the pole to about 1.5 meters off the ground. Most chickens can fly to this height but see what works for yours. It really doesn’t take much to make your chickens happy. But they do need a pole to sleep on at night.
What you feed your chickens:
- A basic seed/corn meal
- Compost – can include eggshells (ours really love labane cheese – could be because they are Bedouin hens)
- Garden weeds and greens (let them go wild!)
- Worms and bugs (they feed themselves while aerating the ground)
- Endless supply of water
Chickens do need basic feed, that which can be bought at a feedlot. Some inquiring around on where to find chickens and feed might be in order. Animal markets for livestock might be your best bet. Ask around in places like that. We bought a huge drum of feed consisting of corn meal and other seeds, and feed our chickens a regular diet of all the vegetable-based compost that would otherwise be composted. But don’t worry. Chicken doo makes an excellent compost too. One of my friends can’t eat eggs unless they are free-range and fed with organic oats. So it’s really up to you to decide how to feed your chickens, depending on your health needs and sensitivities.
We have five chickens and one rooster. The rooster is just for the fun of it. You don’t need one if you have neighbors nearby who will complain about the noise. And roosters DO make noise, waking us up as early as 1:30 am.
Bedouin women (crouching like crows) selling “bede” hens at the market
Unlike commercially-raised chickens, our hens don’t get “sunshine” 24 hours a day. Some parts of the year the chickens won’t lay. They will molt and take a break. And not every chicken will lay every day once she starts. We bought young chickens and it took them a couple of months to start laying. Now three of the five are laying, but like I said, not every day.
See a video interview with my dad about chickens
We bought our chickens at a Bedouin market (for about $10 each) because it was important for my husband that we have a “wild” variety – chickens that haven’t been genetically manipulated. Our eggs are on the small to medium size, the yolks absolutely huge compared to the white. One hen is laying eggs with the most delightful little beige specks on them.
Dad (left), the closest link to my family of egg people is determined that next time he comes to visit me in the Middle East he’ll be smuggling in white hen eggs – “the real good layers” – from Canada. He keeps asking me about building an incubator for these eggs to become hatchlings. Hopefully it will happen and when it does, I’ll report it here on Green Prophet.
Meanwhile, I am dreaming about how many eggs I will collect tomorrow. And how exciting it will be for my little baby daughter, when she gets bigger, to go out and collect them like I did when I was a little girl (that’s me in the top photo). My family had a coop in a suburban town outside Toronto until our evil neighbour complained and we had to get rid of it.
Before the complaints, I would go out and collect our eggs and sell them to our neighbors for a dollar a dozen, to cover the price of feed. Seriously, it was so much fun. If this blogger, and lazy environmentalist who is addicted to the computer can start a coop, you can too. Get cracking and join the new movement of urban farming.
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Chicken Coop Supplies in Hurtsboro, Alabama
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Hurtsboro Alabama" into any one of the numerous search engines and a wealth of information will pop up. This information will provide links to other websites that will be informative and will provide the right direction for finding Hurtsboro Alabama chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Hurtsboro, Alabama With the big rise in chicken maintaining there has actually been a just as large increase in the variety of fowl materiel on sale. Fowl real estate is a case in point. It's additionally a classic instance of the great old bandwagon being got on as various would-be poultry real estate experts peddle a range of accommodation claiming to be the optimal solution to your chicken real estate needs. Often the rate looks appealing, your diy-chicken-coop-planshome looks appealing, heck also the clean-cut family standing there feeding the chickens look appealing. Definitely they recognize a high quality chicken house when they see one? There are many affordable and nasty coops swamping the market. I know this as I've checked a number of them in the field, as well as seen a ewe run directly with one when the feed pail showed up. The result was nothing but a pricey pile of fire wood and a tiny flock of bemused and now homeless bantams.
Chicken Coop Yard Ideas in Hurtsboro, Alabama
Most of the time these standardized designs are created of rapid grown timber - come the very first decrease of rainfall they swell, leaving you either blockading a doorway that will not close, or tearing the doorway furniture off in a vain effort to release the squawking citizens. The very first warm day indicates the timber dries and fractures, the really felt roof bubbles and boils, as well as come nightfall the hens refuse to go in. This is not due to their frustration at the decrease of their when desirable property but because the hovel is currently a place for, and also probably abounding, the fowl keeper's nemesis, red mite. Add on that it stated on the blurb that it would certainly suit four large chickens when that equipping thickness was based on the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, as well as what are you left with? A few hinges as well as some kindling. A decent coop for thee to four birds should cost you around ₤ 300 though this could depend on whether you elect for a cost-free standing house or one with a run connected. Assuming you are varying your birds in a huge area as well as the pop hole door allows enough for the breed you maintain, then the major demands of housing boil down to 3 points which will specify the variety of birds the house will hold; perches, nest boxes as well as ventilation. A lot of breeds of chicken will perch when they visit roost at night, this perch must preferably be 5-8cm broad with smoothed off sides so the foot sits pleasantly on it. The perch must be higher than the nest box entry as chickens will certainly also normally try to find the acme to perch. A perch less than that will certainly have the birds roosting in the nest box overnight (which is incidentally when they create the most poo) bring about dirtied eggs the following day. They shouldn't however be so high off the floor of your house that leg injuries can happen when the bird gets down in the morning. Chickens need about 20cm of perch each (in small types this is obviously less), plus if greater than one perch is mounted in your house they need to be greater than 30cm apart. They will certainly hunker up with their next-door neighbors yet are not that keen on roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird ahead. Ideally your home needs to have a least one nest box for each 3 birds and these need to be off the ground and in the darkest area of your house. The house must have adequate ventilation: without it then condensation will develop every evening, also in the coldest of climate. Be aware, ventilation works on the concept of cozy air leaving via a high space attracting cooler air in from a reduced void - it's not a set of openings on other wall surfaces of your house and at the exact same level, this is what's known as a draught. If you have a house with a run affixed after that the factors above are still true, yet you should also take into consideration the run dimension. The EU maximum lawful equipping density for a cost-free array bird is (and let's encounter it, one of the motivations for maintaining some hens in the house is potentially boosted or better well-being) 2,500 birds each hectare, that's maximum one bird each 4m squared. Take a close consider some of the deal residences - it could well be your house has the best perches, right air flow and enough nest boxes for a sensible variety of birds, yet will each of the chickens have anything greater than an A4 sized item of ground to invest the day on? And so as the claiming goes, "you obtain exactly what you pay for". You could believe you've got a bargain, yet you as well as your group could rue the day you did. Purchase the ideal house as well as it will certainly last for a few decades, otherwise longer offered the proper therapy. Ultimately your poultry as well as your chicken maintaining experience will be much the better for it.plans build
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