Friday, August 5, 2011

How To Keep Chickens And Have Healthy Content Hens Laying Scrumptious Eggs

By Peter Doohan


Most back garden farming enthusiasts say that a chicken coop for housing your hens must be:

- Built in order to be impenetrable or not affected by water

- Draught-free and well-ventilated

- Roomy enough for hens to nest and lay

- Created with perches to allow hens to roost at night

- Offer powerful protection from predator intrusion

Cost-effectiveness, adequacy in protection, and requirements are critical considerations in your housing choices when hoping to buy or fabricate a chicken coop.

Item 1: Home made chicken coop

If you are operating on a tight budget, you'll be able to economize by converting an existing shed, which often needs just a couple of, minor adjustments, and which is sometimes spacious enough to accommodate more than 12 hens. The space required is around six feet long and 4 feet wide.

Chickens basically perch at night. Thus, it is important that you provide perches for them to roost in comfort and convenience. Each perch should be at least 2 feet from the floor and removable for clean-up, upkeep mend or replacement. As much as humanly possible, keep the perches clean to keep the feet of your chickens in good condition.

Item 2: Portable chicken coops

If you've got a small garden and want to keep 2 to 3 regular chickens (or up to five bantams), a lightweight chicken coop is inexpensive. They can be made or bought.

As well as being water-proof, straightforward to maintain, and offering high cover against predators, a good lightweight hen house also has an optional, fox-proof chicken run to boot. A start up rear yard enterprise like yours can invest in a starter kit, which incorporates a small-size run, hens, and sundries such as feeders and feed, as well as the lightweight coop.

Item 3: Standard chicken coop

A chicken coop built along standard wants comes in a wide variety of sizes. More often it has optional chicken runs attached to built-in nest boxes and perches. Whilst the best can be good-looking, well-built, and solid structures, they can be expensive at times , fetching prices as high as $800 apiece. Most backyard farmers prefer to make their own coop, or to purchase a straightforward the six-feet-by-four-feet wooden chicken coop, which can accommodate up to 12 hens.

The frequency of cleaning the coop relies on the season and the number of hens you are keeping. Because hens spend some more time indoors in winter, when daylight is shorter and nights are longer, there'll be a large increase in the volume of crap. When the summer sets in, the coop stays comparatively cleaner as the hens stay longer out of doors.

Cleaning the coop at least 2 times per year is advised as an absolute minimum, more is better.

The longer, healthy lives of your hens are directly in proportion to the cleanliness and sanitation being maintained in the coop. You are better off from day to day if you grab a bucket and moggy litter scoop each morning and gather the crap that had fallen the evening before. There'll be less nasty odors in the coop.

Routine daily clean-up also forestalls the hens from treading on the crap and bringing it into the nest boxes. You will be able to utilise large quantities of crap for your compost pile, from which you organic fertilizer can be had for your garden plants, or just put it on the garden.

Now and then you need to conduct regular checks to discover if the coop has remained weather resistant. Whenever necessary, one or more times in every 6 months, you may reapply a coat or two of the advised waterproofing treatment, especially if you're using a timber coop.

Also, check the roof to guarantee there isn't any water seepage or wetness which will affect the respiration system of the hens and render them at the mercy of other illnesses. Harmful bacteria and fungi are known to proliferate in damp surfaces or surroundings.

If you pay sufficient attention to buying or building a top quality chicken house you will have cheerful healthy hens that supply you with healthy healthy eggs as your reward. Keeping chickens is fun too.




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