Sooner or later , most landowners think about how to make a chicken coop . It is unreasonable not to use the opportunity to independently provide your family with environmentally friendly and safe products. In this case, you can save a significant amount of money. And building a bird habitat cannot be called a difficult event.
Proper construction: preparation
How to make a chicken coop? Where to start construction? First of all, you need to consider an action plan for the construction of housing for chickens. It should include the following items:
- selection of the most suitable place in the territory of land ownership;
- creation of a construction project;
- supply of consumables;
- construction activities;
- arrangement of the premises.
Site selection for work
To understand how to make a chicken coop with your own hands, you need to think about where it will be placed. The right place is the key to success. What do you need to pay attention to first of all? The place of residence of the hens should be safe. The territory on which the house will be located must be fenced or fenced. It is also important to ensure the laying hens rest. Accordingly, the construction should be carried out in those areas that are relatively distant from walkways and places of active recreation.
An ideal placement option for this room would be a shaded area that can be planted with shrubs, which will help protect birds from wind and sun. And if the vegetation will be interesting to the birds, for example, with the available berries, this is an additional advantage. The building must be located on a small elevation. This will make it possible to avoid flooding of the structure during rains.
Project drafting
Bird housing, which is an inconspicuous gray building, is considered habitual. Do not use this approach. To create better conditions and improve the quality of life of birds, it is better to build a beautiful and spacious house. Use your imagination, and the shelter for layers will be an original element of landscape design. Then the question of how to make a chicken coop with your own hands in the same way will be asked to you. After all, the birdhouse in any case will be in sight. Do not spoil the impression of admiring your lands due to a careless attitude to construction.
Creating your own unique project and thinking, for example, about how to make a chicken coop for 10 chickens, it should be borne in mind that for greater productivity, the size of the housing for birds should comply with the standards. The dimensions of the house should be designed so that there are no more than 2 layers per square meter.
Start of construction
After you determine the size, design and location of the house, you need to think about the required materials for construction. You can be attracted to the trends of the modern world, gleaned from the Internet, or the stories of lovers of unconventional design decisions on how to make a chicken coop yourself. But it should be understood that the best material for construction in this case is wood. It is important that the bars are four-pitched and have a thickness of 10 * 15 centimeters. This option is not too expensive, but reliable. Another advantage of wood is that it is environmentally friendly and easy to process.
In addition to the bars for the construction of a major chicken coop, you will also need concrete, insulation, brick, roofing, expanded clay, plywood sheets and fasteners.
Foundation selection
The foundation may be tape or rubble. You can also install bird housing on piles. In this case, it is important to determine how to make a chicken coop yourself more profitable. The opinions of professionals in this case converge most often on the installation of a columnar foundation. In addition to being economically more profitable than other options, it is also easier to execute. You only need cement in the amount of about two bags, sand and a trowel. The columnar type of foundation will allow in the future to prevent the penetration of rodents into the chicken coop, and will also contribute to better ventilation.
If this option is difficult, then you can restrict yourself to the minimum way to install housing for birds on the ground. To do this, it is enough to cover the lower part of the chicken coop with sheets of iron.
Cement foundation
The vegetation necessary for the construction should be cleaned of vegetation. Then you need to dig a hole, which should be flat and have a depth of at least 30 centimeters. At its bottom it is necessary to lay a galvanized metal mesh. Further along the perimeter, you should build a formwork and dig another hole, retreating 25 centimeters from the first. Now you need to pour the mortar from concrete and cover the foundation with burlap. It takes a few days to wait. After the cement has completely dried, the boards should be removed, and the soil remaining after digging the holes should be filled in their place.
Floor laying
If you are faced with the question of what to make a floor in a chicken coop, it is better to give preference to the classical technique. It is necessary to lay a roofing material with which the first crown of the bars is insulated (the main, horizontal row of the log house), their ends must communicate. Then it should be placed on the floor logs (transverse beams) at a distance of 50 cm from each other. The gaps between them need to be closed with bars.
Wall installation
The following crowns, from which the walls of the chicken coop are already being built, are connected by a thorn-groove fastener. Between the rows of wood, it is necessary to lay a heater, which has a flax-jute base.
Whenever a chicken coop is built from wood with natural humidity, it needs to be planted on pins (special fixing nails). For them, you need to make holes at intervals of 1 meter. Wooden dowels are driven in secret to a depth of 7 centimeters. This method is a recommendation for those who do not know how to make a chicken coop with their own hands so that it does not warp in case of shrinkage.
The correct option for building housing for birds has a wall height of at least 1.8 meters.
Roof formation
The best option for bird housing is a gable roof. The attic, which is formed during its construction, can be used to store equipment or feed. To create such a roof, it is necessary to install a supporting system consisting of rafters of inclined legs and struts, vertical racks. Now you can lay the roof. The ceiling inside the chicken coop needs to be insulated and covered with plywood.
How to perch in a chicken coop?
First of all, the perch for a chicken is to ensure its safety. When a bird sits on it, it can survey the surroundings and feel comfortable on a raised platform. It is advisable to place a perch near the windows of the chicken coop, in a sufficiently lit place. Behind the perch there should be nothing but a blank wall.
An important parameter for a roost is its height. For young animals, this figure is about 0.6 meters from the floor, for large-breed hens - 0.8, for ordinary laying hens - 1 meter. Mounts for perches on the walls are more reasonable to do at different levels. This will allow the need to change the height of the poles.
A perch is also necessary for the birds to be in normal physical shape. After all, in order to climb it, they need to bounce and take off. The total length of existing roosts should be calculated based on the fact that for one chicken, 20-30 centimeters of space is required on them.
Creation of additional conditions
If there is no natural light in the chicken coop , it is necessary to create artificial light . A light bulb with a power of 40 watts is quite suitable for this. It is recommended to install trays under the perch to facilitate cleaning the chicken coop. Feeding troughs and drinking bowls are placed on a certain elevation. They should always be full and clean. For layers, you need to install a dark box in the corner of the chicken coop. It is recommended to tear the floor with sawdust or straw. To make it convenient for birds to get into their house, if it is on a hill or if they enter it not through a door, but through a window, you can install a ladder or a ladder. The same method is useful in the case of roosts in small rooms of chicken coops, so that when you try to fly up on them there will be no injuries.
If you are interested in other ways to make a chicken coop, the photo selection provided in the article will help with this.