Chicken Coops for Sale in Ibapah, Utah
Chicken Coops for Sale in Ibapah, Utah
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 Yard Design in Ibapah, Utah
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Ibapah Utah" 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 Ibapah Utah chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Ibapah, Utah With the huge boost in poultry keeping there has actually been a just as large increase in the range of fowl paraphernalia for sale. Poultry housing is a situation in point. It's likewise a classic instance of the excellent old bandwagon being got on as different prospective fowl real estate professionals peddle a range of lodging asserting to be the perfect remedy to your chicken real estate requirements. Often the cost looks attractive, your house looks eye-catching, hell also the clean-cut family members standing there feeding the chickens look eye-catching. Undoubtedly they know a quality chicken house when they see one? There are many economical as well as nasty cages flooding the marketplace. I know this as I've tested a number of them in the field, and also seen a ewe run directly with one when the feed container showed up. The result was nothing but an expensive heap of fire wood and a small group of bemused and currently homeless bantams.
Baby Chick House in Ibapah, Utah
Most of the time these mass produced designs are constructed of fast grown up timber - come the very first drop of rainfall they swell, leaving you either blockading a door that will not shut, or ripping the doorway furniture off in a vain effort to release the squawking residents. The first cozy day indicates the wood dries out and fractures, the felt roof covering bubbles and boils, and come nightfall the hens refuse to go in. This is not due to their disappointment at the decline of their once desirable apartment yet due to the fact that the hovel is currently a haven for, and also most likely crawling with, the fowl caretaker's bane, red mite. Add the fact that it said on the blurb that it would certainly fit four large chickens when that stocking density was based upon the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, and also exactly what are you left with? A few hinges as well as some kindling. A respectable coop for thee to 4 birds need to cost you approximately ₤ 300 though this can depend upon whether you elect for a complimentary standing house or one with a run affixed. Assuming you are varying your birds in a huge area and the pop hole doorway is big enough for the breed you maintain, after that the major needs of housing come down to 3 factors which will define the number of birds your house will certainly hold; perches, nest boxes as well as ventilation. A lot of breeds of chicken will perch when they visit roost during the night, this perch ought to preferably be 5-8cm vast with smoothed off edges so the foot rests conveniently on it. The perch must be higher than the nest box access as chickens will certainly likewise naturally look for the acme to perch. A perch less than that will certainly have the birds roosting in the nest box over night (which is incidentally when they produce one of the most poo) leading to soiled eggs the following day. They shouldn't however be so high off the flooring of your house that leg injuries might occur when the bird comes down in the morning. Chickens require about 20cm of perch each (in small types this is undoubtedly less), plus if greater than one perch is set up in your house they should be more than 30cm apart. They will hunker up with their next-door neighbors however are not that keen on roosting with a beak in the bloomers of the bird in front. Ideally your house needs to have a least one nest box for every single 3 birds as well as these need to be off the ground and also in the darkest location of your home. The house needs to have adequate air flow: without it then condensation will accumulate every evening, even in the chilliest of weather condition. Realize, air flow deals with the principle of cozy air leaving with a high void drawing cooler air in from a lower space - it's not a set of holes on opposite wall surfaces of the house and also at the same level, this is exactly what's known as a draft. If you have a house with a run attached then the points above are still true, but you should additionally think about the run size. The EU optimum legal stocking thickness for a complimentary range bird is (and also let's face it, one of the motivations for keeping some hens in the house is possibly enhanced or better well-being) 2,500 birds each hectare, that's maximum one bird per 4m made even. Take a close take a look at some of the deal homes - it could well be the house has the appropriate perches, correct ventilation and also enough nest boxes for an affordable number of birds, but will each of the chickens have anything more than an A4 sized piece of ground to spend the day on? And so as the stating goes, "you get just what you spend for". You might assume you've grabbed a bargain, yet you and also your group could rue the day you did. Purchase the appropriate house and it will certainly last for a few years, otherwise longer given the appropriate therapy. In the long run your fowl and your chicken keeping encounter will be considerably the better for it.build coop
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