If You Want To Keep Chickens At Home Find Yourself A Good Chicken Coop
There’s no doubt that everyone loves pets, and most of us love eggs too. And there is a wonderful way to combine your love of pets and eating eggs together. Why not keep chickens?
Kids just love chickens. Mine happily spend hours feeding them, picking them up and patting them and collecting the eggs at the end of the day. Chickens are cheap to feed and easy to keep. Provided you have only hens they don’t make much noise and if you allow them to free range in the garden they will eat those nasty bugs that feed on your vegetables.
But before you buy some chickens you do need to think about housing them. You will need a good chicken coop to house your chickens. Let’s consider the ins and outs of chicken coops.
Of course the first thing you’ll need to consider is how many chickens you wish to house. If you’d like a box of eggs a day you’ll need plenty of chickens, however for most families 3 or 4 hens is sufficient. If this is the case a simple movable chicken house that can be trundled around the garden is quite adequate.
There are also regulations in some places governing the keeping of chickens as well as the size of chicken houses and you should check this out first.
The cheapest way to get your own chicken coop is to build it yourself. If you’re handy with a hammer and nails it shouldn’t be too difficult. Some treated pine, some chicken wire and a few odds and ends and you can have your own chicken coup built during an afternoon.
Although not essential it helps to provide an enclosed area for the hens to nest. This is where the eggs will be laid.
At night chooks need to roost to sleep, so they need some perches above the floor of the chicken house to do so.
There is a simple A-frame design that is easy to build and quite adequate for 3 or 4 chickens. Run rods from one side of the chicken coop to the other for the chickens to roost on at night and put some cover over this area so they are not roosting in the rain.
If you put handles on one end and wheels on the other it is then easy to move around the garden, and you move it every few days to fertilise different areas of the lawn.
There is generally no problem in allowing your chickens to roam the garden during the day, although it is important to make sure they have returned to the chicken house at night and to close the entry door. Even in the middle of the city it is possible to find foxes and foxes while a chicken for dinner.
Kids just love having chickens, as well as the eggs. But before you get started on your new hobby of keeping chickens decide how many you wish to have, and buy or build a a good quality chicken coop to house them in and you’re well on your way to a fridge full of eggs.
All you have to do is get stuck into a simple handyman job building your chicken coop or buy a good one and then you can be comfortable knowing that you always have a fridge full of eggs.
