Chicken coops plans

There are many reasons why more and more people are looking into raising chickens in their backyard. Some raise backyard chickens to increase the safety of their own food supply by avoiding the risk of large scale salmonella or E. Coli contaminations that seem to happen on a regular basis with chicken and eggs among other foods. Others prefer the higher nutritional content of grass-fed free-range eggs compared to any eggs found in the supermarket. Still others prefer to get eggs from happy chickens that are allowed to live out their lives running and foraging outdoors, instead of from chickens that are confined within cages not even big enough to allow them to stand upright or stretch their wings for a year to 15 months before being discarded as worthless. Some people just enjoy getting back to nature and living closer to the land. I guess I’d say that all of those reasons factored into my decision to begin raising backyard chickens in the spring of 2009.

Basic Chicken Keeping Expenses

There are some basic expenses required to begin raising backyard chickens, in terms of both capital equipment and ongoing expense. As you might expect, expenses generally fall into the categories of food and shelter along with some miscellaneous equipment.

Even Free-range Chickens Need Store-bought Food

Chickens that are allowed to free-range will forage. They will eat insects, seeds and plants throughout the yard. They are especially fond of anything that you don’t want them to eat, such as your entire vegetable garden. If you want to have both chickens and a garden you’ll need to fence one or the other in. Free range chickens, however, also need chicken feed in addition to the forage for proper nutrition. Although it is possible to mix your own chicken feed, that’s not an option for most beginners. Instead you’ll need to buy chicken feed from a local farm supply store. It comes in 50 pound bags for between $10-15 per bag. Free-ranging will help reduce the amount of chicken feed they eat, but will not replace it entirely. My flock of 15 free-ranging chickens goes through about 50 pounds in a month on average.

How Big Should A Chicken Coop Be?

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