Chicken Coops for Sale in Plympton, Massachusetts
Chicken Coops for Sale in Plympton, Massachusetts
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 Accessories in Plympton, Massachusetts
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Plympton Massachusetts" 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 Plympton Massachusetts chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Plympton, Massachusetts With the huge rise in poultry keeping there has been an equally big surge in the array of fowl materiel for sale. Fowl housing is an instance in factor. It's likewise a timeless instance of the great old bandwagon being got on as different would-be fowl real estate professionals pitch an array of accommodation declaring to be the ideal solution to your chicken real estate requirements. Often the rate looks appealing, the house looks attractive, hell also the clean-cut family members standing there feeding the chickens look appealing. Certainly they recognize a high quality chicken house when they see one? There are numerous low-cost as well as awful cages swamping the market. I understand this as I've examined a number of them in the field, and seen a ewe run directly via one when the feed pail showed up. The result was only a pricey stack of fire wood and also a small group of bemused as well as currently homeless bantams.
Baby Chick Hatching in Plympton, Massachusetts
Most of the time these standardized versions are constructed of quick grown up lumber - come the first decline of rainfall they swell, leaving you either defending a door that will not shut, or tearing the doorway furniture off in a vain attempt to release the squawking citizens. The initial cozy day indicates the timber dries and cracks, the felt roofing bubbles and also boils, and come nightfall the chickens choose not to go in. This is not because of their dissatisfaction at the decrease of their when appealing apartment but because the hovel is now a place for, as well as probably crawling with, the chicken caretaker's nemesis, red mite. Add on the fact that it said on the blurb that it would certainly match 4 huge hens when that stocking thickness was based upon the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, and also what are you left with? A couple of joints and some kindling. A suitable coop for thee to 4 birds should cost you approximately ₤ 300 though this can depend upon whether you choose for a totally free standing house or one with a run affixed. Presuming you are ranging your birds in a big room as well as the pop hole doorway is big sufficient for the type you keep, after that the main requirements of housing come down to 3 points which will certainly define the number of birds your home will hold; perches, nest boxes as well as air flow. Many types of chicken will perch when they go to roost during the night, this perch should preferably be 5-8cm wide with smoothed off edges so the foot rests pleasantly on it. The perch needs to be higher than the nest box entry as chickens will certainly also naturally look for the highest point to perch. A perch below that will certainly have the birds roosting in the nest box overnight (which is incidentally when they create the most poo) resulting in stained eggs the following day. They should not however be so high off the floor of the house that leg injuries could happen when the bird comes down in the early morning. Chickens need regarding 20cm of perch each (in tiny types this is undoubtedly less), plus if greater than one perch is installed in your home they must be more than 30cm apart. They will certainly hunker up with their neighbors however are not that crazy about roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird ahead. Preferably your home must have a the very least one nest box for every single three birds and these need to be off the ground as well as in the darkest area of your house. The house needs to have ample ventilation: without it then condensation will certainly accumulate every night, also in the chilliest of weather. Realize, air flow deals with the principle of warm and comfortable air leaving via a high space drawing cooler air in from a lower space - it's not a collection of holes on contrary wall surfaces of your house and at the very same degree, this is exactly what's called a draft. If you have a house with a run connected after that the factors above are still real, however you ought to also consider the run dimension. The EU maximum lawful equipping thickness for a cost-free array bird is (and let's face it, among the motivations for maintaining some chickens in the house is possibly enhanced or far better well-being) 2,500 birds per hectare, that's maximum one bird per 4m settled. Take a close consider a few of the deal residences - it could well be your home has the appropriate perches, appropriate ventilation as well as adequate nest boxes for a reasonable variety of birds, however will each of the chickens have anything more than an A4 sized piece of ground to invest the day on? And so as the stating goes, "you obtain what you spend for". You could think you've got a deal, however you and your flock could possibly rue the day you did. Acquisition the ideal house and it will last for a couple of decades, otherwise longer given the appropriate therapy. Ultimately your chicken as well as your poultry maintaining encounter will certainly be a lot the much better for it.chicken coop
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