Chicken Coops for Sale in Palmer, Alaska
Chicken Coops for Sale in Palmer, Alaska
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 House in Palmer, Alaska
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Palmer Alaska" 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 Palmer Alaska chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Palmer, Alaska With the significant rise in chicken keeping there has actually been an equally huge rise in the variety of chicken paraphernalia for sale. Poultry real estate is a situation in factor. It's also a classic instance of the excellent old bandwagon being jumped on as numerous potential poultry real estate specialists peddle a variety of cottage claiming to be the ideal option to your chicken real estate requirements. Often the rate looks desirable, your diy-chicken-coop-planshome looks appealing, heck even the clean-cut household standing there feeding the chickens look desirable. Undoubtedly they know a high quality chicken house when they see one? There are lots of low-cost and also awful cages flooding the market. I know this as I've checked a variety of them in the field, as well as seen a ewe run directly via one when the feed bucket showed up. The result was just a costly heap of fire wood and a tiny flock of bemused and also currently homeless bantams.
Baby Chicks in Palmer, Alaska
Generally these mass produced designs are created of rapid grown hardwood - come the very first drop of rainfall they swell, leaving you either barricading a doorway that will not close, or tearing the door furniture off in a vain effort to launch the squawking occupants. The initial cozy day suggests the timber dries out and also cracks, the really felt roof covering bubbles and boils, as well as come nightfall the chickens choose not to go in. This is not due to their frustration at the decline of their as soon as attractive apartment but due to the fact that the hovel is currently a sanctuary for, and possibly abounding, the poultry caretaker's bane, red mite. Add on the fact that it stated on the blurb that it would match 4 huge chickens when that equipping thickness was based upon the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, and also what are you entrusted? A few hinges and also some kindling. A good coop for thee to 4 birds need to cost you in the region of ₤ 300 though this could depend on whether you elect for a complimentary standing house or one with a run attached. Thinking you are ranging your birds in a big area as well as the pop opening doorway is big enough for the type you maintain, after that the main needs of housing boil down to 3 factors which will certainly define the number of birds your home will certainly hold; perches, nest boxes as well as ventilation. The majority of types of chicken will perch when they go to roost in the evening, this perch must ideally be 5-8cm wide with smoothed off edges so the foot sits easily on it. The perch must be above the nest box entrance as chickens will certainly additionally normally search for the highest point to perch. A perch below that will have the birds roosting in the nest box overnight (which is incidentally when they create the most poo) bring about stained eggs the following day. They should not however be so high off the floor of your home that leg injuries could possibly take place when the bird gets down in the early morning. Chickens require concerning 20cm of perch each (in tiny types this is certainly less), plus if more than one perch is set up in the house they must be greater than 30cm apart. They will hunker up with their next-door neighbors yet are not that keen on roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird in front. Ideally your house should have a least one nest box for every 3 birds as well as these need to be off the ground as well as in the darkest area of your home. Your home ought to have ample ventilation: without it after that condensation will certainly accumulate every evening, even in the coldest of weather condition. Understand, ventilation deals with the concept of cozy air leaving through a high gap attracting cooler air in from a reduced void - it's not a collection of holes on opposite walls of the house and at the very same degree, this is exactly what's known as a draft. If you have a house with a run connected then the factors above are still real, but you ought to also take into consideration the run dimension. The EU optimum legal stocking thickness for a complimentary range bird is (and allow's face it, one of the motivations for maintaining some hens in your home is possibly boosted or much better welfare) 2,500 birds per hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m settled. Take a close take a look at a few of the bargain houses - it could well be the house has the best perches, correct ventilation as well as adequate nest boxes for a sensible variety of birds, but will each of the chickens have anything greater than an A4 sized item of ground to invest the day on? And so as the saying goes, "you get just what you spend for". You could think you've grabbed a bargain, however you as well as your group might rue the day you did. Acquisition the appropriate house and also it will certainly last for a few decades, if not longer offered the right treatment. In the end your chicken and also your chicken maintaining encounter will be a lot the better for it.build diy
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