Chicken coops plans

Your chicks are on order and the brooder tub is all set up and ready for them. Now you just need a place to put them when they’re ready to move outdoors. You need a chicken coop, a henhouse, a chicken tractor — but which one? And how big should it be? Can you convert an old shed to a chicken coop?

Decide on Management Method

The type of coop you choose depends on whether the chickens …

You can buy a dozen eggs at the supermarket for 99 cents, or you can go out to the chicken coop you built and fetch a warm egg out of the soft pine wood shavings in the nesting boxand thats priceless.

Basic frame with temporary braces and the rafters

Every day I gently carry my three brown eggs into the house marveling all the way to the refrigerator. Maybe Im a hopeless romantic, but I …

Chickens have got to be the easiest, most forgiving, creatures for a small farm to manage. While any book you pick up on chickens would have you believe that they can suffer from any number of perfectly horrible parasites and problems, the fact is… there’s nothing to them. They’ll call the …

Dear Cecil:

I am far from being the world’s biggest sucker when it comes to advertising gimmicks, but I find myself succumbing to the legend “cage free” on packages of eggs. These eggs cost at least a buck more per dozen than regular eggs. I tell myself that cage-free chickens are probably no better off than their sisters kept in cages (probably they’re just packed tighter into …

Guest contributor Joshua shared his impressions of chicken-raising with his three-year-old son G yesterday. Today, he’ll explain how easy it can be to keep a few chickens as a city-dweller.

We live in Seattle, one of dozens of large cities that allow you to keep chickens. Sometime during the early development of Seattle, somebody had the bright idea of banning all farm animals. A lot of …

Keeping a few chooks in the backyard used to be something only Grandpa did. But it seems the popularity of the backyard chicken with young families and inner city residents is on the rise in Brisbane for lots of reasons.

Read Michele’s blog about chickens and why they are such a lovely part of her Brisbane backyard.

Here are some of the benefits of keeping chickens:

Eggs! It just …

In the backyard of a suburban home in Denver, Colorado, 22 chickens are hiding out from the law.

They arrived when a member of BackyardChickens, an online forum, ordered the birds in the mail this past May. “I actually get my chicks in today hopefully, and I am worried that animal control will be at the post office waiting for me with hand-cuffs,” the new poultry farmer wrote.

An …

How to outfox reynard

According to gypsy folklore, you should ask the men of the house to urinate around a chicken’s pen as the scent terrifies sly Mr Fox

Another old wives’ tale follows a similar logic, and recommends balls of human hair, stuffed into stockings and tied on to the fence of the chicken run. Why? Because we are an odorous species, and our hair is particularly rich in …

When the chicks begin to outgrow their box, you may move them outdoors – either to a larger pen inside a barn or shed, or to their new chick yard which you should have ready. A good temporary pen may be made out on the grass or in the barn/shed by taking a roll of one-inch mesh hardware cloth (welded wire fencing), stand the roll on end, and unroll it into a large corral; you can wiretie …

Finding land, getting birds, feeding chickens and selling eggs.

HOMESTEAD HANDBOOK

Raising Rabbits is a Hare-raising Business

A beginner’s guide to raising rabbits, including a rabbit barn, pens, feeders and waterers, breedin…

How to Freeze Eggs For Winter Use

Here is how you can freeze eggs for longer storage or for winter use when your hens are laying …