Chicken Coops for Sale in Sutter, Illinois
Chicken Coops for Sale in Sutter, Illinois
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 Adelaide in Sutter, Illinois
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Sutter 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 Sutter Illinois chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Sutter, Illinois With the substantial rise in poultry maintaining there has actually been a just as big surge in the range of fowl materiel on sale. Poultry housing is a situation in point. It's also a traditional instance of the excellent old bandwagon being got on as numerous potential chicken real estate experts market a range of accommodation asserting to be the perfect solution to your chicken housing requirements. Typically the cost looks desirable, the house looks desirable, hell also the clean-cut family members standing there feeding the chickens look attractive. Undoubtedly they know a top quality chicken house when they see one? There are many affordable as well as horrible coops flooding the marketplace. I recognize this as I've examined a variety of them in the area, as well as seen a ewe run straight through one when the feed bucket showed up. The outcome was nothing but a costly heap of firewood and a little group of bemused as well as now homeless bantams.
Chicken Coop Accessories in Sutter, Illinois
Typically these standardized models are created of fast grown up wood - come the very first decline of rainfall they swell, leaving you either blockading a doorway that will not shut, or ripping the door furniture off in a vain effort to release the squawking citizens. The initial warm and comfortable day implies the lumber dries out and also cracks, the really felt roof bubbles and also boils, and also come nightfall the hens choose not to enter. This is not due to their disappointment at the decrease of their once eye-catching building but considering that the hovel is now a sanctuary for, as well as most likely abounding, the poultry keeper's bane, red mite. Add that it claimed on the blurb that it would certainly match four big chickens when that equipping thickness was based on the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, and also just what are you entrusted? A few hinges and some kindling. A decent coop for thee to 4 birds ought to cost you in the region of ₤ 300 though this could depend upon whether you elect for a cost-free standing house or one with a run attached. Presuming you are varying your birds in a huge space and the pop hole door allows enough for the breed you maintain, then the major needs of real estate come down to 3 factors which will certainly specify the variety of birds your house will hold; perches, nest boxes as well as ventilation. Many breeds of chicken will certainly perch when they go to roost in the evening, this perch must ideally be 5-8cm broad with smoothed off sides so the foot rests comfortably on it. The perch ought to be more than the nest box entrance as chickens will certainly additionally normally try to find the highest point to perch. A perch lower than that will have the birds roosting in the nest box over night (which is by the way when they generate one of the most poo) bring about soiled eggs the list below day. They shouldn't nonetheless be so high off the flooring of your home that leg injuries might happen when the bird gets down in the early morning. Chickens require concerning 20cm of perch each (in little types this is undoubtedly less), plus if more than one perch is set up in your home they must be greater 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 home needs to have a the very least one nest box for each three birds and these need to be off the ground and also in the darkest location of your house. Your home needs to have adequate ventilation: without it then condensation will certainly accumulate every evening, even in the coldest of climate. Be aware, ventilation works with the principle of warm air leaving via a high void attracting cooler air in from a reduced void - it's not a set of holes on opposite wall surfaces of your house and also at the same level, this is just what's known as a draught. If you have a house with a run affixed then the points above are still true, however you should additionally take into consideration the run size. The EU maximum legal stocking density for a free range bird is (and also let's encounter it, one of the inspirations for maintaining some hens at home is possibly enhanced or better well-being) 2,500 birds per hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m squared. Take a close look at several of the deal homes - it could well be the house has the appropriate perches, proper ventilation and ample nest boxes for an affordable number of birds, however will each of the chickens have anything more 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 might assume you've grabbed a bargain, but you and also your group might rue the day you did. Acquisition the best house and it will last for a few decades, otherwise longer given the proper treatment. In the end your fowl and also your chicken maintaining encounter will be a lot the better for it.coop plan
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