Chicken Coops for Sale in Cottage Grove, Minnesota
Chicken Coops for Sale in Cottage Grove, Minnesota
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.
Read more on urban farming:
Share this:
Baby Chick Enclosure in Cottage Grove, Minnesota
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Cottage Grove Minnesota" 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 Cottage Grove Minnesota chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Cottage Grove, Minnesota With the massive increase in chicken keeping there has actually been a similarly big increase in the range of fowl paraphernalia for sale. Poultry housing is an instance in factor. It's additionally a classic example of the good old bandwagon being got on as different would-be poultry housing specialists market a variety of holiday accommodation claiming to be the perfect remedy to your chicken housing requirements. Frequently the price looks eye-catching, your house looks attractive, heck even the clean-cut family standing there feeding the chickens look appealing. Certainly they recognize a top quality chicken house when they see one? There are many cheap and also unpleasant coops flooding the marketplace. I recognize this as I've tested a variety of them in the field, as well as seen a ewe run directly through one when the feed bucket appeared. The outcome was nothing but a pricey heap of firewood and a little flock of bemused as well as currently homeless bantams.
Chicken Coop Out Of Pallets in Cottage Grove, Minnesota
Most of the time these standardized models are built of rapid grown timber - come the first decrease of rainfall they swell, leaving you either barricading a door that won't shut, or ripping the doorway furniture off in a vain effort to launch the squawking inhabitants. The initial warm day indicates the timber dries as well as cracks, the felt roof covering bubbles and also boils, and come nightfall the hens choose not to enter. This is not due to their disappointment at the decrease of their once appealing commercial property but because the hovel is currently a haven for, and possibly abounding, the chicken caretaker's nemesis, red mite. Add on that it claimed on the blurb that it would fit four large chickens when that equipping thickness was based upon the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, as well as exactly what are you left with? A couple of joints and also some kindling. A good coop for thee to four birds ought to cost you approximately ₤ 300 though this could depend upon whether you elect for a cost-free standing house or one with a run connected. Presuming you are varying your birds in a huge area as well as the pop opening doorway is big sufficient for the breed you keep, after that the main requirements of housing come down to 3 factors which will specify the variety of birds your house will hold; perches, nest boxes as well as ventilation. Many types of chicken will certainly perch when they visit roost during the night, this perch ought to preferably be 5-8cm large with smoothed off sides so the foot rests conveniently on it. The perch must be more than the nest box entrance as chickens will certainly likewise normally search for the acme 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 the most poo) bring about dirtied eggs the list below day. They should not however be so high off the flooring of the house that leg injuries could take place when the bird gets down in the morning. Chickens require regarding 20cm of perch each (in tiny breeds this is undoubtedly much less), plus if more than one perch is set up in your home they need to be greater than 30cm apart. They will certainly hunker up with their next-door neighbors however are not that crazy about roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird ahead. Preferably your house ought to have a the very least one nest box for each three birds and these must be off the ground and also in the darkest location of your house. Your house ought to have ample air flow: without it after that condensation will develop every evening, also in the coldest of climate. Be aware, air flow deals with the concept of cozy air leaving via a high gap drawing cooler air in from a reduced gap - it's not a set of openings on contrary wall surfaces of the house and also at the same level, this is what's known as a draft. If you have a house with a run affixed then the points above are still real, however you should additionally take into consideration the run dimension. The EU optimum lawful stocking density for a cost-free variety bird is (and let's encounter it, among the motivations for keeping some chickens in the house is potentially boosted or much better welfare) 2,500 birds each hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m squared. Take a close check out several of the deal houses - it could well be the house has the ideal perches, appropriate ventilation as well as adequate nest boxes for an affordable variety of birds, yet will each of the chickens have anything more than an A4 sized piece of ground to invest the day on? Therefore as the stating goes, "you get exactly what you spend for". You may believe you've got hold of a bargain, yet you and also your group might rue the day you did. Purchase the ideal house as well as it will last for a few decades, if not longer offered the right therapy. Eventually your fowl and also your chicken maintaining encounter will certainly be much the far better for it.plan plans
More Posts
Chicken Coops for Sale in Castle Rock, Minnesota
Chicken Coops for Sale in Brownsdale, Minnesota
Chicken Coops for Sale in Clinton, Minnesota
Chicken Coops for Sale in Conger, Minnesota
Chicken Coops for Sale in Appleton, Minnesota