Keeping Chickens Alive During Cold Weather

Chickens are pretty easy creatures to raise. That is, until the cold season comes. Jordan Walker, the lead content curator of Coops and Cages, shares tips to improve the survivability of chickens during winter.

Chicken owners who live in mild climate regions are a bit luckier than most. Those who live in harsh weather conditions have to keep their chickens closely monitored especially during winter season. Find out how to prepare for such circumstance beforehand to avoid any untoward incidens when the time comes. Continue reading “Keeping Chickens Alive During Cold Weather”

Save Money Building a Chicken Coop

A well-built chicken coop can wreck your chicken budget (I know I’m not the only one with a monthly budget entry for chickens). You need your flock to be well protected. You want your chicken coop to be sturdy and not be an eyesore in the back yard. You also need to make sure your hens have enough space, and never forget to leave a little room for the chickens yet to come. You know you are going to get more. So, how can you accomplish all of this without spending a fortune on chicken coops? Well, it’s not easy, but I am going to cover a few ways I have found to save a little bit of money on my chicken coops.

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Raising Backyard Chickens for Eggs. Part 3 – The Coop

Your chickens have grown and thrived in the brooder and it is time for them to go out to their permanent home.  By this point they have gotten too big for the brooder box, your spouse is tired of the smell and constant dust from all the flapping, and luckily they can tolerate the outside temps.  So its time to move your chickens outside. Continue reading “Raising Backyard Chickens for Eggs. Part 3 – The Coop”

Pallet Chicken Coop | DIY Chicken Coop

Our first chicken coop was functional, but left a lot to be desired.  We learned a lot from our first little coop, and we put what we learned into our second, bigger pallet chicken coop.  Things we learned from the first coop, make a coop big enough to walk in, roosters are big, need a bigger door,  and always plan you coop to get even more chickens.  Chickens are addictive, and you will always want more.  With these things in mind, we worked on designing our next chicken coop.

The first step was to acquire some wooden pallets.  Wood is getting more and more expensive.  We wanted to do this as inexpensively as possible, as we are cheap.  I got a truck load of free wooden pallets for our chicken coop by asking around. Continue reading “Pallet Chicken Coop | DIY Chicken Coop”

Re-homing Our Chickens

I know we have been a little MIA with only the random post lately. We’ve just been so busy trying to get several good size projects done amid all of our normal everyday responsibilities. Neither of us seemed to have enough time, energy, nor inspiration to write much. One of those projects was Jon building a new bigger chicken coop so that we would have enough space for our current flock of 6 as well as 6 more that we got at Tractor Supply almost 7 weeks ago.
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Nesting Box Curtains

Shortly after we integrated the new chicks into the flock, we had noticed some of the younger chickens were roosting in the edge of the nesting box. Although we had not seen any of them just hanging out in the nesting box there were signs (chicken poop). It is possible this would not develop into a bad habit, but I did want to break them of this before it became a problem.

So, last Saturday I decided to make some nesting box curtains for the coop. I dug through my big bag of various material and scraps. I toyed with using some black and white cow print material that was left over from one of my son’s Halloween costumes as a child. He is graduating college in a couple of weeks….if that tells you how long I’ve had it. But then I found this old pink and white material that was perfect.
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Adding New Chicks To The Flock

Sunday at my parents’ house while sitting around the table eating lunch after church I began telling the family about my experience the day before with adding the new young chicks to our existing flock. As they sat around snickering at me my sister tells me, “That’s one for the blog!”. I thought to myself, “Hmmm, I don’t know if I want to share that or not”. But here goes.

First, let me clarify that our existing flock is not full grown chickens. They are about 10 weeks old now. They are getting close to full grown size, but not quite there yet. They also have partial comb and wattle growth, but they have not completely grown in. Here are a few pictures of them about a week ago, but they have already grown more since then.

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Building the Chicken Coop

The basic design for our chicken coop was a 3’x4′ square.  3′ tall with a simple slanted roof. It is to house chickens so it is not necessary to go overboard, and I am very proud of myself as I usually go overboard.

Lowe’s had 2×3’s on sale. 2×4’s are the usual material for wall studs and floor joists but let’s face it, chickens don’t weigh that much.  With the price of lumber (as well as everything else) these days, any savings was appreciated. I decided to use 1/4″ OSB instead of plywood due to the price difference.  The moral here is, while we love our chickens, they are still just chickens and don’t need a “William Sonoma” mansion.

Chicken Coop Supplies from Lowes
Chicken Coop Materials from Lowe’s

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