Chicken Coops for Sale in Glen Jean, West Virginia
Chicken Coops for Sale in Glen Jean, West Virginia
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:
Chicken Coop Plans Free in Glen Jean, West Virginia
A good place to start any search is the internet. Simply plugging in the phrase "chicken coops for sale in Glen Jean West Virginia" 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 Glen Jean West Virginia chicken coops. What to look for when buying a chicken coop in Glen Jean, West Virginia With the huge increase in chicken keeping there has been a similarly large rise in the range of fowl paraphernalia for sale. Chicken housing is a proceedings in point. It's likewise a traditional example of the great old bandwagon being jumped on as different potential poultry housing specialists peddle an array of cottage asserting to be the optimal solution to your chicken real estate requirements. Usually the rate looks appealing, your house looks desirable, heck even the clean-cut family members standing there feeding the chickens look desirable. Undoubtedly they understand a quality chicken house when they see one? There are many economical as well as awful coops flooding the marketplace. I know this as I've examined a variety of them in the area, and also seen a ewe run directly through one when the feed container showed up. The outcome was only an expensive stack of firewood and a tiny group of bemused and also currently homeless bantams.
Chicken Coop Necessities in Glen Jean, West Virginia
Typically these standardized designs are built of fast grown lumber - come the initial drop of rainfall they swell, leaving you either blockading a door that won't close, or ripping the door furniture off in a vain attempt to launch the squawking inhabitants. The very first warm and comfortable day suggests the lumber dries and splits, the felt roof covering bubbles as well as boils, and come nightfall the chickens choose not to enter. This is not as a result of their dissatisfaction at the decrease of their when appealing home yet since the hovel is now a place for, and also possibly crawling with, the fowl caretaker's nemesis, red mite. Add the fact that it stated on the blurb that it would match four huge hens when that equipping density was based upon the Circle Line at 5pm on a Friday, and also just what are you entrusted? A couple of joints and also some kindling. A respectable coop for thee to four birds should cost you in the region of ₤ 300 though this could depend upon whether you elect for a free standing house or one with a run connected. Assuming you are ranging your birds in a big area and also the pop opening doorway allows enough for the breed you maintain, after that the primary requirements of real estate boil down to 3 points which will certainly define the number of birds your house will hold; perches, nest boxes as well as air flow. Many breeds of chicken will certainly perch when they go to roost during the night, this perch ought to preferably be 5-8cm broad with smoothed off sides so the foot sits easily on it. The perch must be above the nest box entry as chickens will certainly additionally normally search for the highest point to perch. A perch below that will have the birds roosting in the nest box over night (which is incidentally when they generate one of the most poo) bring about dirtied eggs the following day. They should not however be so high off the floor of the house that leg injuries could occur when the bird comes down in the morning. Chickens need regarding 20cm of perch each (in small breeds this is undoubtedly less), plus if greater than one perch is installed in your house they should 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 ahead. Ideally your home needs to have a least one nest box for each 3 birds and also these need to be off the ground and in the darkest area of your house. Your home must have adequate ventilation: without it then condensation will certainly build up every night, even in the coldest of climate. Know, air flow deals with the principle of warm and comfortable air leaving through a high space attracting cooler air in from a reduced space - it's not a collection of holes on contrary wall surfaces of your house and also at the exact same level, this is exactly what's known as a draught. If you have a house with a run connected then the factors above are still real, yet you must likewise take into consideration the run size. The EU maximum legal equipping thickness for a totally free range bird is (and also let's face it, among the motivations for maintaining some chickens in the house is potentially boosted or much better welfare) 2,500 birds per hectare, that's maximum one bird per 4m squared. Take a close take a look at several of the bargain houses - it could well be your house has the ideal perches, right air flow and also sufficient nest boxes for a reasonable variety 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 saying goes, "you get just what you pay for". You might think you've grabbed a bargain, but you and your group might rue the day you did. Acquisition the best house and also it will last for a few years, otherwise longer offered the appropriate therapy. In the end your chicken and also your fowl maintaining encounter will be a lot the far better for it.build chickens
More Posts
Chicken Coops for Sale in Canvas, West Virginia
Chicken Coops for Sale in Crum, West Virginia
Chicken Coops for Sale in Burlington, West Virginia
Chicken Coops for Sale in Beeson, West Virginia
Chicken Coops for Sale in Ethel, West Virginia