4 Costly And Serious Mistakes To Steer Clear Of While Building Chicken Coops

When I first started building chicken coops many years ago I made lots of haphazard mistakes. My very first poultry house was constructed in a location with inferior drainage, making the ground mucky and muddy when it rained. This resulted in unhealthier chickens and the eggs were usually unclean and required cleaning. It was also about 5 times bigger than it needed to be 5 times as expensive.

On the other hand, through trial and error, it didn't take long before I was building chicken coops that were inexpensive and painless to maintain. I was having so much fun I started keeping lots of different varieties of chickens, hatching fertile eggs in an incubator that my own chickens had produced. Plus, I started keeping additional types of birds including duck, turkey, guinea, quail, and a few others. Making fully functional and well-designed hen houses made my hobby enjoyable and gratifying. If you want to have a first-class experience in your new hobby, do everything acceptably on your first attempt and steer clear of costly rookie errors.

Mistake #1: Not Thinking Ahead

With a little planning you will enhance the odds of ending up with a pleasurable hobby. At a bare minimum you will want to sketch a rough diagram of how your poultry house will appear. In the drawing you ought to include where the doors, walls, wire enclosures, windows, poultry nests, feeders, and waterers will be placed. By developing as meticulous of a representation as you are able, including size and dimensions, you can more precisely estimate the amount of materials you will require. Money will be squandered if you purchase too many materials.

When deciding on where to put specific items in your chicken house, try to position them in areas that will be handy for you. As an example, adding a small-sized door in the right place can make egg gathering a simple chore. Locate the poultry nests on a wall that has a tiny outside-available door just a tad above the height of the poultry nests. Building poultry houses in this fashion will make it possible to collect eggs from the outside without needing to go inside.

Try to utilize a plan where the chicken pen is built a couple of feet off the soil with chicken wire for the flooring. This will allow the bird droppings to drop beneath the wire as an alternative to building up inside their home. It will remove the necessity of constant cleaning and keep the hens away from their droppings.

Mistake #2: Not Spending Enough Time Evaluating Its Location

Building chicken coops in inadequate backyard places is surely one of the biggest mistakes that novices make. Choosing an inferior backyard place can cause sickly and unproductive hens. The chicken housing ought to be in an area with superior drainage. Lacking decent drainage you can end up with a concoction of muddy water and bird droppings. Consuming this polluted water or tracking it into the nesting and feed area will almost definitely have the consequence of less eggs, sickness, and even fatalities among the flock.

The chicken house should be built close to easily accessible water. This will allow you to add simple automatic watering practices and remove the need for you to give them fresh water every day.

Mistake #3: Not Assessing the Value of Proper Lighting before Construction

Hens should have at least 14 hours of sunlight per day to provide you with eggs reliably, so construct your chicken house facing south for the greatest sunlight exposure. In addition, this will keep the chicken house drier which will help it stay cleaner. If you are planning to collect fresh eggs during the seasons of the year where there are less than 14 hours of daylight per day you will have to supply them with synthetic lighting using low-wattage light bulbs. Locating your chicken pen near an available electrical source is helpful in these situations.

Mistake #4: Not Offering the Pullets Adequate Air Circulation

For high-quality ventilation you need to provide a window or two. Chicken droppings can produce strong smells that can possibly be detrimental to their physical health if permitted to build up. At least one window, but if at all possible two, will be positioned in locations that will allow sufficient ventilation and air circulation. With better ventilation the chicken pen will stay drier, and therefore cleaner, which will help inhibit diseases.