Which Chicken Shed Type is Right for Your Poultry?

There are several things that have to be taken seriously when it comes to deciding on the style of chickens coops that will best fill your wants and needs. The first factor is the quantity of birds you will be growing. The more birds, the larger the coop will need to be.

Day-old chicks call for less space than started birds or fully developed birds. Young chicks must be provided more warmth, so depending on the temperatures in your area you may be required to furnish some heat or insulate your shed. Cooler places might make it necessary for you to build a totally enclosed poultry coop, but warmer climates might allow you to build larger outdoor areas made with wire.

Fowl coops come in a lot of different sizes and types. The littlest variety is the chicken tractor, also known as a chicken ark, and is very small housing apt for just a few birds. It will normally have a small wooden house section and an out-of-doors portion made from wire. The reason for its small size is to make transporting it a simple task. Chicken tractors are movable.

This sort of poultry housing will allow pullets to graze around for a percentage of their own food. Once your chickens have pecked a particular spot clean, the complete ark can easily be transported to a new section of the backyard where there are additional fresh vegetation to dine on. Chickens love to hunt and peck for food so this kind of chicken housing is ideal for keeping your birds contented and vigorous. As a bonus, cleaning up is just dragging the chicken ark to a different locale.

Growing larger numbers of birds will require you to either construct a larger stationary edifice or multiple movable chicken arks. Larger housing will be in the form of chickens coops, also recognized as chicken sheds, and will certainly be costlier since more wood and more chicken wire will be required. It will also take some extra thought and preparation. Be certain to purchase a decent set of blueprints prior to starting on a larger undertaking as you don't want to make pricey errors and discover too late that you made it incorrectly and spent more money than was necessary.

With a small chicken ark you can minimally purchase an inexpensive feeder, waterer, and nest box and place them into the ark. Conversely, with oversized poultry pens you must build them with efficiency in mind. Unlike the chicken ark, the larger sheds must be cleaned often, which means you need to plan ahead. You might want to put in an all-wire bottom two feet off the ground. This will be able to stop droppings from building up in the shed itself, and can make it less time-consuming to move them to your backyard garden area when needed.

With larger coops you will need to plan for ventilation, nest box locations, keeping the feed and water clean, and a multitude of other things. Windows are desirable to keep clean air blowing through. This will normally allow the coop to stay drier and will stop odors from building up. It can let in extra light which is necessary for optimum egg production. Synthetic lighting should be added to your chicken house if you expect to have your hens laying all year long.

You might also want to position your nesting boxes so that you can collect eggs from the outside of your chicken housing. A good deal of preparation is needed if you would like to sidestep errors. You may think you know exactly what you want, but it's better to purchase a first-class chicken coop manual anyway. You may possibly uncover helpful techniques for doing things that you never considered before. And because first-class chicken coop manuals can be found inexpensively online, it would be an intelligent idea to get one.