Raising chickens can be entertaining, relaxing, and gratifying. The small backyard grower can save money while providing organic meat and eggs for the family and building your own hen houses can save you hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars over buying manufactured versions. Once manufactured, your hen house will last for many years and you'll have the pleasure of knowing you're growing nourishing food for the table. Furthermore, you'll have an unceasing supply of free manure for your backyard garden plot. You couldn't ask for any more than this.
Once the hen house is completed, raising chickens is in all honesty undemanding. You will have to provide feed and water to your pullets, gather the eggs, and clean up on occasion. But even the cleaning up won't take a very long time if you have manufactured your chicken house using a good set of plans. And building a chicken coop can be finished in just one weekend.
If you would like everything to go smoothly you must have a good set of hen house plans. This is very vital. For a small sum of money it's possible to get buy good chicken house plans that will save you a lot of money on building the structure and also save you a good deal of labor. In addition, you will have to keep some other things in mind so that your accommodations can give the birds a healthy place to dwell and require as little upkeep from you as possible.
Pullets need the correct amount of light every day to sustain high egg production quantities. Light penetrates the eye and stimulates the pituitary gland, which in turn secretes hormones that stimulate a chicken's ovaries to lay eggs. Birds that are expected to lay eggs must be provided about 14 hours of light every day. During the seasons when the quantity of sunlight is less than this total, you can add a low-wattage light bulb to the interior of the coop so that your hens will continue laying all year.
Daylight is the best source of light. Your hen house ought to have at least one, but if possible two windows to allow light into the chicken house. The windows will serve two distinct purposes. First, they will permit sunlight into the chicken house. And second, they will provide a way of keeping fresh air circulating throughout the pen. Unpleasant smells can build up swiftly in hen houses and two or more nicely placed windows will keep fresh air blowing through. The added air flow will also help keep the chicken shed drier which is beneficial since a wet pen is a source of disease.
There are several other important items that you should mull over prior to building your poultry coop. Build it facing south for maximum sunlight exposure. Make sure it's in an area with excellent water drainage and that there's room for future expansion. You may begin with only 6 or 8 hens, but if you wish to raise more birds at some point in time you will want the added room.
Make the coop so you can gather eggs from the exterior of the shed without distressing the hens. Mechanical watering will save you a good deal of time, so this ought to be thought about in advance. Manufacturing the hen house a couple of feet above the ground with a floor made from chicken wire will keep it clean inside the hen house and also make it an easy task to transfer the droppings to your garden plot.
