Chicken Coops for Sale in Peckville, Pennsylvania
Chicken Coops for Sale in Peckville, Pennsylvania
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 With Run in Peckville, Pennsylvania
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Peckville Pennsylvania" 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 Peckville Pennsylvania chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Peckville, Pennsylvania With the significant rise in chicken maintaining there has been an equally huge surge in the array of poultry paraphernalia for sale. Poultry housing is an instance in factor. It's likewise a classic example of the great old bandwagon being got on as numerous potential poultry housing specialists market an array of accommodation claiming to be the suitable option to your chicken real estate requirements. Typically the cost looks appealing, your house looks appealing, hell even the clean-cut family members standing there feeding the chickens look desirable. Surely they know a quality chicken house when they see one? There are numerous affordable and also nasty cages swamping the marketplace. I know this as I've tested a variety of them in the area, and seen a ewe run straight through one when the feed container appeared. The result was nothing but a costly pile of fire wood and a tiny flock of bemused and now homeless bantams.
Baby Chick Feeder in Peckville, Pennsylvania
More often than not these mass produced models are constructed of rapid grown hardwood - come the initial decline of rain they swell, leaving you either blockading a door that will not shut, or tearing the doorway furnishings off in a vain attempt to launch the squawking citizens. The initial cozy day implies the timber dries as well as cracks, the really felt roofing bubbles as well as boils, and come nightfall the chickens refuse to enter. This is not due to their disappointment at the decline of their when eye-catching residential property however because the hovel is currently a haven for, and probably abounding, the chicken keeper's bane, red mite. Add that it claimed on the blurb that it would certainly fit four big chickens when that stocking density was based on the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, as well as what are you left with? A couple of joints and some kindling. A good coop for thee to 4 birds must cost you approximately ₤ 300 though this could depend on whether you choose for a free standing house or one with a run connected. Presuming you are ranging your birds in a huge room and also the pop hole doorway allows sufficient for the type you keep, after that the major demands of housing boil down to 3 points which will certainly define the variety of birds your home will hold; perches, nest boxes and also air flow. A lot of breeds of chicken will perch when they go to roost at night, this perch ought to preferably be 5-8cm vast with smoothed off edges so the foot sits easily on it. The perch ought to be higher than the nest box entry as chickens will certainly additionally normally try to find the highest point to perch. A perch less than that will certainly have the birds roosting in the nest box overnight (which is by the way when they create the most poo) bring about stained eggs the list below day. They should not however be so high off the flooring of the house that leg injuries could possibly take place when the bird gets down in the morning. Chickens require regarding 20cm of perch each (in tiny breeds this is obviously less), plus if more than one perch is installed in your house they ought to be more than 30cm apart. They will hunker up with their neighbors yet are not that crazy about roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird in front. Preferably your home should have a the very least one nest box for every single three birds and also these should be off the ground and also in the darkest location of your house. Your home ought to have ample air flow: without it then condensation will certainly develop every night, even in the chilliest of weather. Know, ventilation works on the concept of warm air leaving through a high gap drawing cooler air in from a reduced space - it's not a collection of holes on opposite walls of the house as well as at the very same degree, this is what's known as a draught. If you have a house with a run connected then the factors above are still true, yet you must additionally think about the run dimension. The EU optimum lawful equipping thickness for a cost-free array bird is (and also let's face it, one of the motivations for maintaining some chickens at home is possibly boosted or better welfare) 2,500 birds per hectare, that's optimal one bird each 4m made even. Take a close check out some of the bargain homes - it could well be your house has the best perches, right air flow and also enough nest boxes for an affordable variety of birds, but will each of the chickens have anything greater than an A4 sized item of ground to spend the day on? And so as the claiming goes, "you obtain exactly what you pay for". You could think you've grabbed a bargain, yet you and also your flock could rue the day you did. Acquisition the right house and it will last for a couple of decades, if not longer given the proper therapy. In the end your fowl and your poultry maintaining encounter will certainly be considerably the much better for it.plans coop
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