Before we go further what is a CHICKEN COOP?
SIMPLE PUT; a poultry/chicken coop is a farm building for housing chicken. Having known what a chicken coop is, you can see it’s very important to get it right from the beginning.
Some of the few reasons why you should construct a quality chicken coop and how it can help your poultry farm are,
· Easy harvest of organic poultry eggs,
· Raising chicken as just got easier with a chicken coop.
· Easy recycling of food scraps and developing quality fertilizer from dropping.
· Adequate ventilation and effective housing system for maximum productivity.
· It reduces stress and work-load for the stock man.
· Diseases outbreak and sickness among birds is limited.
Cannibalism and over-crowding is reduced.
Starting a new chicken coop, you need to SET A GOAL on how it’s going to look like, the measurement, the size and stuffs like that.
You need to ask yourself how many chickens you plan to keep, for what purpose you’re keeping the chickens. Your answer to this question will be the things you should consider for your coop.
Design a plan for your chicken coop, you can purchase a chicken coop plan or design your own. Some basics things to consider in designing your own are;
- Height: Most chicken coops are raised three feet off the ground level; this is for security sake as increased height protects the birds from predators and thieves.
- Heat and light: base on the structure of your environment your coop will require some sort of temperature and light which can be more or less, based on how much protection and care your chicken will require.
- Proper Ventilation; there is need for proper and adequate ventilation to ease breathing and healthy coop environment for your chicken so you must make this available to them inside the coop.
- Food and water: Your chicken will need access to food and clean water inside the coop away from the litter. The style used for this can be simple or bigger based on the number of birds and need.
Perches : Perches inside the coop will provide a suitable place for the birds to rest at night, as chicken generally prefer to sleep on a perch, and that the perches need to be distance enough apart so that the chicken won’t be overcrowded.
Litter: If you want to maintain a healthy and clean poultry housing system for your birds you need to make litters available in their coop, since they are together their droppings can be easily cleared off when there is a litter (wood shavings, sawdust) inside the coop, used litter can also make an excellent fertilizer outside poultry.
Nest box : Another important element to be included in a coop is a nest box, this is where layers will jump into and lay their egg, avoid making it too spacious or too comfortable so that the birds aren’t encourage to stay there for hours after laying as this can lead to cracking of eggs.
Assemble all materials and tools that is needed to build up your coop, plywood, timber, nails, wire-net, and lots more, do this only if you are building the coop yourself but on a safer side you can give a dimension and get the expert to do this for you.
Some important tips to help you in constructing you own chicken coop;
1. Try to increase the size of the coop for instance, if you are considering 25mm x 25mm you can increase it to 50mm x 50mm so that it can accommodate more in case you increase the number of the birds in the future.
2. In the process of your construction add window and doors, the window and doors should be the last ones you should work on.
3. After the entire construction you can a overall inspection to note errors, and make amendment unto perfection of the coop.
4. If it’s a home based chicken coop or a backyard poultry you can paint the chicken coop in any color you like to match the overall character of your home.
5. Make sure feeding trough and drinkers with clean water are made available inside the coop before bringing the chicken.
6. Make sure the chicken coop is safe from predators.
7. Exercise absolute caution when working with power tools.
These are some of the requirement ad tips for raising a quality chicken coop, if you know more or wish to add to this course kindly do so using the comment box below.
