Chicken Coops for Sale in East Galesburg, Illinois
Chicken Coops for Sale in East Galesburg, Illinois
Build Your Own Chicken Coop – A story of chickens
So WAY back in March…Josh and I had a talk with the boys and we decided as a family that we would get some chickens. We were all pretty excited about this new adventure and couldn’t wait to get started! At the beginning of April we headed over to to figure out what we would need and how many chickens we wanted. They had a very helpful employee who told us everything we would need to know about taking care of our chickens. Also, lucky for us we had Housewife Gena available to answer any questions we might have!
The boys were excited to help pick out the chickens and were even more excited when the IFA staff told us the chicks needed to be held lots and lots so they would be used to the kids. 🙂� After about an hour there we came home with…
Six adorable chicks! Because we are a family of five we decided to get two chickens that are said to lay daily and four chickens that lay 3-4 times a week. We figured that would be plenty of eggs for us!
A couple weeks later, IFA did an Easter Egg Hunt. Now being a farm supply store, they don’t give away just candy in their eggs, they also give away…you guessed it CHICKENS! (And bunnies and ducks and turkeys) Housewife Jenn’s kids ended up with four leghorn chicks! Another family in our ward decided they didn’t need any extra chickens and gave Jenn’s family another two chicks! Since we were already building a coop for our chicks, we offered to let Jenn’s family’s chicks live with ours.
So here are the little chicks! Happy under their heat lamp and eating away! 🙂�
While our chicks were perfectly happy in the garage, in their tote…it quickly got too small for 12 chicks. As soon as they were ready, we transferred them to the backyard to a makeshift coop. I did not take a picture of the makeshift coop because…well it was pretty sad. It served it’s purpose and the chickens loved it but it was not anything you’d want to show off! With that in mind, Josh began the process of building a coop for our chickens. We saw a coop at IFA that we thought looked great! However, it was $600.00. As much as we liked our chickens…we didn’t $600.00 like them!
So Josh took a few measurements and we sketched out what we wanted for our chickens, using the IFA coop as inspiration. We took a trip to Lowe’s to price out our materials. We were lucky enough that we had left over wood, Jenn’s family had left over wood and a family a few houses down from us reroofed their house and donated their left over roofing supplies to us! It was our goal to use as many materials as we already had and keep the cost as low as possible!
Let me say now…Josh and I have never “built” anything. Really. This was quite an adventure for us (mostly Josh since he did almost all of the work) and I’m so happy with how it all turned out!
He started with the base for the coop itself. We wanted to make sure that there was enough clearance for the chickens to use under the coop as part of the chicken run.
He used four 3″ screws in each post to make sure it was nice and sturdy.
Wall framing almost done!
Look what happens when you start building a coop…your chickens start laying eggs! 🙂� (So far Jenn’s chickens are the only ones laying. Lucky for us, our chickens are DUAL chickens so if they don’t get to laying…they going to get to frying!)
The framing completed from two angles.
Up go the walls!
Putting in the hinged door for collecting eggs.
Getting the eggs out will be a breeze! 🙂�
A few angles of the walls all up and the plywood for the roof up. As you can see, our coop has skylights…that’s how we roll.
First coat of paint and the tar paper on the roof. You may wonder why we chose this color for the coop. Well to be completely honest, we picked colors we wanted to paint our house and figured the coop would be the perfect guinea pig to see if we like the colors! 🙂� The coop is Valspar’s Royal Gray. (I know, it looks blue to me too!)
For the door we chose Valspar’s Kettle Black. It has blue undertones so it goes really well with the Royal Gray.
The roof complete with the windows in. I’ve seen lots of super cute coops with real glass windows. It was less expensive ($1.29 a pane) to just use plexiglass. And it worked perfectly!
The coop with the final coat of paint, windows/hardware on and trim put up.
The door on the coop. We chose to put a large door on the side to make it easier to clean out for us. And I have to say that it makes it look way cuter! 🙂�
The Roosting bar inside the coop.
Trim all painted and mesh put around the bottom of the coop.
The nesting boxes. The only thing I didn’t get a picture of was the peel and stick tiles that we put on the bottom of the coop. They were only $0.02 a tile! I think we ended up using about 14 tiles.
The finished product with the happy chickens inside!
Another angle. After the coop itself was completed. Josh used 2 x 2’s and 2 x 3’s to build the frame for the yard and another, outdoor roosting bar. We also added in the ramp for the chickens to get into the coop. I’m super proud of Josh for all of his hard work and I’m really excited for how amazing it turned out!! Our total cost for the entire coop…every last nail, hinge, can of paint, everything was about $290.00. And the best part is the chicken coop and run are significantly bigger than the one at IFA. 🙂� So HUGE round of applause for Josh and the coop!
UPDATE: Hello dear readers!!! This has been a long time coming, but this post is going to get a HUGE revamp! With having babies and life getting in the way, I’ve neglected this post and getting out the information that I should. I am going to be working on updating this post with as much information on the building and materials as I can. We didn’t keep super great track of all the materials we used, but I will do the best I can to give you as much info as possible! Thank you all again for loving this project!
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Chicken House in East Galesburg, Illinois
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in East Galesburg Illinois" 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 East Galesburg Illinois chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in East Galesburg, Illinois With the significant increase in poultry maintaining there has actually been an equally huge rise in the array of poultry materiel on sale. Chicken housing is a proceedings in point. It's also a traditional example of the excellent old bandwagon being jumped on as numerous prospective fowl real estate professionals market a selection of lodging declaring to be the perfect solution to your chicken real estate requirements. Typically the price looks attractive, your house looks eye-catching, hell also the clean-cut household standing there feeding the chickens look desirable. Certainly they understand a quality chicken house when they see one? There are several low-cost and also horrible cages swamping the market. I recognize this as I've examined a variety of them in the field, and seen a ewe run directly via one when the feed pail showed up. The result was just an expensive stack of firewood as well as a small group of bemused and also currently homeless bantams.
Chicken Coop Yard Design in East Galesburg, Illinois
Most of the time these standardized designs are created of quick grown up timber - come the very first drop of rainfall they swell, leaving you either defending a door that won't shut, or ripping the doorway furniture off in a vain effort to release the squawking occupants. The initial warm and comfortable day means the wood dries as well as cracks, the really felt roof covering bubbles as well as boils, and come nightfall the hens refuse to go in. This is not as a result of their frustration at the decrease of their as soon as appealing residential property yet because the hovel is currently a sanctuary for, and possibly crawling with, the fowl keeper's nemesis, red mite. Add the fact that it stated on the blurb that it would suit 4 huge hens when that equipping thickness was based on the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, as well as what are you entrusted? A couple of joints as well as some kindling. A good coop for thee to four birds must cost you around ₤ 300 though this could rely on whether you choose for a cost-free standing house or one with a run attached. Thinking you are ranging your birds in a large space and also the pop hole door is big enough for the breed you maintain, then the primary demands of housing boil down to 3 points which will define the variety of birds the house will certainly hold; perches, nest boxes and air flow. The majority of breeds of chicken will certainly perch when they visit roost in the evening, this perch should ideally be 5-8cm wide with smoothed off edges so the foot sits comfortably on it. The perch needs to be above the nest box entry as chickens will also naturally look for the highest point to perch. A perch less than that will have the birds roosting in the nest box over night (which is by the way when they create the most poo) causing dirtied eggs the following day. They should not however be so high off the floor of the house that leg injuries could possibly occur when the bird gets down in the early morning. Chickens require about 20cm of perch each (in little breeds this is undoubtedly less), plus if more than one perch is mounted in your home they ought to be more than 30cm apart. They will certainly hunker up with their next-door neighbors however are not that keen on roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird in front. Ideally your house ought to have a the very least one nest box for every single 3 birds and also these must be off the ground and in the darkest location of your house. The house needs to have ample ventilation: without it then condensation will certainly accumulate every night, also in the coldest of weather. Realize, ventilation works with the concept of warm 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 your house and also at the same level, this is exactly what's referred to as a draught. If you have a house with a run affixed then the points above are still real, yet you ought to additionally consider the run size. The EU optimum lawful equipping thickness for a complimentary range bird is (as well as let's face it, among the motivations for maintaining some chickens in your home is possibly boosted or far better well-being) 2,500 birds per hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m made even. Take a close consider a few of the bargain homes - it could well be your home has the best perches, right air flow and also enough nest boxes for a sensible number of birds, but will each of the chickens have anything greater than an A4 sized piece of ground to spend the day on? Therefore as the stating goes, "you get just what you pay for". You may assume you've got a bargain, however you as well as your group can rue the day you did. Acquisition the best house as well as it will last for a couple of years, if not longer provided the correct treatment. Ultimately your fowl and also your chicken keeping encounter will be considerably the far better for it.diy plans
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