Chicken Coops for Sale in Mars Hill, North Carolina
Chicken Coops for Sale in Mars Hill, North Carolina
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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Baby Chicks Hatching in Mars Hill, North Carolina
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Mars Hill North Carolina" 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 Mars Hill North Carolina chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Mars Hill, North Carolina With the big increase in poultry maintaining there has been a similarly large rise in the range of chicken paraphernalia for sale. Fowl real estate is a proceedings in factor. It's additionally a classic example of the great old bandwagon being got on as numerous potential fowl housing specialists peddle a variety of accommodation asserting to be the optimal option to your chicken housing demands. Typically the rate looks desirable, your diy-chicken-coop-planshome looks attractive, hell also the clean-cut household standing there feeding the chickens look appealing. Surely they know a professional chicken house when they see one? There are several affordable and also awful coops swamping the market. I know this as I've checked a number of them in the area, and seen a ewe run straight via one when the feed container showed up. The result was nothing but an expensive stack of firewood and also a tiny group of bemused as well as now homeless bantams.
Baby Chick Care in Mars Hill, North Carolina
Typically these standardized models are created of fast grown up lumber - come the initial decrease of rainfall they swell, leaving you either fortifying a door that will not shut, or ripping the door furniture off in a vain attempt to release the squawking citizens. The first warm day suggests the hardwood dries and also fractures, the really felt roof bubbles as well as boils, as well as come nightfall the chickens choose not to enter. This is not due to their dissatisfaction at the decrease of their when appealing building but considering that the hovel is currently a haven for, and also most likely abounding, the chicken keeper's bane, red mite. Add that it said on the blurb that it would certainly suit 4 big 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 decent coop for thee to four birds must cost you in the region of ₤ 300 though this can depend upon whether you elect for a complimentary standing house or one with a run attached. Thinking you are varying your birds in a huge room and the pop hole doorway allows sufficient for the breed you maintain, then the primary requirements of housing boil down to 3 factors which will specify the variety of birds your house will certainly hold; perches, nest boxes and ventilation. A lot of types of chicken will perch when they go to roost in the evening, this perch should ideally be 5-8cm vast with smoothed off sides so the foot sits easily on it. The perch must be higher than the nest box entry as chickens will additionally normally look for the acme to perch. A perch below that will certainly have the birds roosting in the nest box overnight (which is by the way when they generate one of the most poo) leading to soiled eggs the list below day. They shouldn't however be so high off the flooring of your home that leg injuries can take place when the bird gets down in the early morning. Chickens require about 20cm of perch each (in tiny breeds this is certainly less), plus if more than one perch is mounted in the house they need to be more than 30cm apart. They will certainly hunker up with their next-door neighbors yet are not that keen on roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird in front. Ideally your house should have a least one nest box for every single 3 birds as well as these need to be off the ground and in the darkest location of your home. The house must have sufficient air flow: without it after that condensation will build up every night, even in the coldest of climate. Know, air flow deals with the principle of cozy air leaving through a high space drawing cooler air in from a lower space - it's not a set of openings on contrary walls of your house as well as at the same level, this is just what's known as a draught. If you have a house with a run connected after that the points above are still true, yet you must additionally take into consideration the run dimension. The EU optimum lawful equipping density for a cost-free array bird is (and allow's encounter it, among the motivations for keeping some chickens in the house is perhaps boosted or far better well-being) 2,500 birds each hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m settled. Take a close take a look at a few of the deal houses - it could well be your house has the best perches, correct ventilation and sufficient nest boxes for a practical number of birds, but will each of the chickens have anything more than an A4 sized item of ground to spend the day on? Therefore as the saying goes, "you obtain exactly what you pay for". You might assume you've grabbed a bargain, yet you and your group might rue the day you did. Purchase the right house and also it will certainly last for a couple of years, otherwise longer given the proper treatment. In the end your fowl and your chicken keeping experience will be much the better for it.coops build
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