Chicken coops plans

Keeping the chickens’ water ice-free during the winter can be a struggle.

The classic technique for full-grown chickens is the old bucket switcheroo: when you go out to tend the chickens, you bring out a galvanized bucket of warm water with you, and leave it for them to drink. You take away the partly empty bucket you left for them last time, which may have frozen. You bring the frozen …

Barn Construction

The design and construction of our passive solar barn has many of the same features as our passive solar greenhouse. It is stick-frame construction and will be insulated with blown cellulose (hopefully before winter hits). There are three double-pane windows and 2 doors that provide ample ventilation when open. The interior is painted with white exterior house paint in order …

We’ve had our egg laying chickens for about 8 months. It’s my first experience raising chickens and there has been a lot to learn.

Egg Laying Chickens for Beginners

When we first decided to raise chickens our coop was not yet constructed, but we went ahead and made arrangements to buy a half dozen pullets (young hens) from a nearby farm. Since our farm was not equipped with a space …

Keeping free range chickens in your backyard can be a lot of fun. You will get a constant supply of fresh, tasty eggs. If you want to keep the birds as pets (and many people do) you will not want to think about having the occasional Sunday roast dinner courtesy of your feathered flock, but it is an attractive option for some poultry keepers.

None of this can be done without looking after your …

Backyard chicken raising need not be a backbreaking and arduous activity if done with a good plan at hand. If you have a ready budget, it doesn’t cost too much to purchase a ready-made coop for your little feathered friends. If you don’t have the budget but have enough time, then you can build your own coop with a little help from a DIY handbook.

But even before you purchase the first yard …

This section is for basic “how to do it yourself” guidance — click on a link below to go to that page.

Hatching Eggs How to Hatch Eggs - #1 of a series

Dry Incubation by Bill Worrell

Homemade Incubators – Make your own chicken egg incubator using designs submitted by our chicken forum community.

Candling Pics: Progression Through Incubation (including …

We’ve modified our chicken nesting boxes and it has made a huge difference in the behavior of our egg laying chickens.

Low Egg Production

This past fall our egg production numbers fell significantly when our chickens developed a habit for routinely eating eggs. After a bit of research we decided to modify the nesting boxes, from large communal boxes to shoe box size nesting spaces.

The …

Outdoor Chicken Yard

We want our chickens to be happy, but safe. In our region there are many predators that endanger free roaming chickens. Besides coyote which are prevalent in the area, there have been sightings of both mountain lions and wolves in the vicinity. Several of our neighbors have lost hens to these predators, even chickens that were thought to be protected by fenced-in yards. …

If you want to get started in, or have already started raising chickens, it’s certainly an advantage to download some plans for chicken house construction. You can build a chicken house extremely cheap, and it doesn’t take particularly good handyman skills. This article helps you get the ball rolling.

Prerequisite List

It pays off to take a systematic approach to building a chicken …

I often visit my uncle and when he told me of the ‘chicken project’ as he called it, I became really interested. At first he did look into buying a coop, but when he realised the cost he did some further research and found that building your own chicken coop just makes economical sense. You can build a chicken coop at just a fraction of the cost of buying a pre-built one. Most pre-built …