Chicken Coops for Sale in Freehold, New Jersey
Chicken Coops for Sale in Freehold, New Jersey
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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Baby Chicken in Freehold, New Jersey
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Freehold New Jersey" 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 Freehold New Jersey chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Freehold, New Jersey With the huge rise in poultry keeping there has been a just as big surge in the array of fowl materiel for sale. Chicken housing is a proceedings in factor. It's likewise a classic example of the great old bandwagon being got on as various would-be poultry housing specialists market an array of accommodation declaring to be the perfect option to your chicken real estate needs. Commonly the rate looks eye-catching, your diy-chicken-coop-planshome looks appealing, heck even 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 numerous affordable and awful coops swamping the marketplace. I recognize this as I've tested a variety of them in the area, and seen a ewe run directly through one when the feed pail showed up. The result was only a pricey heap of firewood and also a little flock of bemused as well as currently homeless bantams.
Baby Chick Hatcheries in Freehold, New Jersey
Most of the time these mass produced designs are constructed of rapid grown timber - come the very first drop of rain they swell, leaving you either defending a door that will not shut, or tearing the doorway furniture off in a vain attempt to launch the squawking citizens. The very first cozy day implies the hardwood dries out and also cracks, the really felt roof bubbles and also boils, as well as come nightfall the hens choose not to go in. This is not because of their dissatisfaction at the decline of their once desirable building yet since the hovel is now a sanctuary for, and possibly abounding, the chicken keeper's bane, red mite. Add on that it stated on the blurb that it would match four large hens when that equipping thickness was based upon the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, as well as what are you entrusted? A number of hinges and also some kindling. A good coop for thee to four birds must cost you approximately ₤ 300 though this could rely on whether you elect for a totally free standing house or one with a run affixed. Assuming you are ranging your birds in a large space and the pop hole doorway is big sufficient for the breed you maintain, then the major demands of real estate come down to three points which will specify the number of birds your home will certainly hold; perches, nest boxes as well as air flow. The majority of types of chicken will certainly perch when they visit roost at night, this perch should ideally be 5-8cm broad with smoothed off sides so the foot rests conveniently on it. The perch must be more than the nest box entry as chickens will certainly likewise naturally try to find the highest point to perch. A perch lower than that will certainly have the birds roosting in the nest box overnight (which is incidentally when they produce one of the most poo) causing dirtied eggs the following day. They shouldn't however be so high off the floor of the house that leg injuries could take place when the bird gets down in the morning. Chickens require concerning 20cm of perch each (in tiny types this is clearly less), plus if greater than one perch is set up in your house they should be greater than 30cm apart. They will certainly hunker up with their neighbors yet are not that crazy about roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird in front. Preferably the house needs to have a least one nest box for each 3 birds as well as these must be off the ground and in the darkest location of the house. The house must have adequate ventilation: without it then condensation will certainly build up every night, even in the chilliest of climate. Realize, air flow deals with the principle of cozy air leaving via a high void attracting cooler air in from a lower gap - it's not a collection of holes on other walls of your house as well as at the exact same level, this is just what's known as a draught. If you have a house with a run connected then the factors above are still true, but you must also consider the run dimension. The EU maximum lawful equipping thickness for a complimentary array bird is (and also let's face it, one of the motivations for keeping some hens in the house is perhaps improved or much better well-being) 2,500 birds each hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m made even. Take a close consider some of the bargain homes - it could well be your home has the best perches, right air flow as well as ample nest boxes for a sensible 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 claiming goes, "you obtain just what you pay for". You could assume you've got a bargain, but you as well as your group can rue the day you did. Purchase the best house and also it will certainly last for a couple of years, if not longer given the appropriate treatment. Eventually your fowl and also your chicken keeping encounter will certainly be considerably the far better for it.build chickens
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