Starter Coops E-Book

Wendy Bedwell-Wilson

• Herausgeber: CompanionHouse Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 202

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A full-color introductory guide to providing a flock of chickens with their very own digs, Starter Coops addresses the needs of every chicken owner, analyzing what kind of accommodations will best serve the ladies' needs. Author and chicken enthusiast, Wendy Bedwell-Wilson offers commonsense advice and money-saving tips to get new chicken keepers off to the right start. Starter Coops begins with the necessary elements of every chicken coop—safely constructed, predator-proof, ideally sized, draft-free, and weather-proof—and then goes beyond to personalize the coop to the needs of the keeper and his or her flock. The author discusses power sources, water stations, nesting boxes, and dusting boxes in addition to architectural and design elements. The chapter title "Tour de Coops" discusses the pros and cons of the various approaches to keeping chickens: free range, confined housing, yarded housing, and a chicken tractor. The author keeps the focus on the convenience for the keeper as well as what's best for the girls in terms of behavior, safety, comfort, and so forth. From planning for the future coop and the purchase of the needed tools and materials to the actual construction, this book offers detailed step-by-step instructions to the beginning keeper. Color drawings assist the reader with building a confined coop, chicken tractor, nesting boxes, portable perches, expanded brooders, A-frame hide, and lean-to hide. In "Finishing Touches," Bedwell-Wilson offers some useful and fun advice for chicken keepers as they complete their starter coops. Planting a chicken garden for the birds to forage, building a play area, and adding feeding stations to the coop are some the author's suggestions. She also discusses the importance of regular cleaning and maintenance—along with shortcuts and tips to simplify every chore—plus advice about managing pests and predators and seasonal management for the flock. A glossary of terms, resource section, and index are provided.

Leseprobe

Lead Editor: Jennifer Calvert

Senior Editor: Amy Deputato

Senior Editor: Jarelle S. Stein

Art Director: Cindy Kassebaum

Book Project Specialist: Karen Julian

Production Manager: Laurie Panaggio

Production Supervisor: Jessica Jaensch

Production Coordinator: Leah Rosalez

Indexer: Melody Englund

Vice President, Chief Content Officer: June Kikuchi

Vice President, Kennel Club Books: Andrew DePrisco

I-5 Press: Jennifer Calvert, Amy Deputato, Karen Julian, Jarelle S. Stein

Copyright© 2012 by I-5 Press™

Front Cover Photography: Furtwangl/Flickr

Back Cover Photography: (top) Furtwangl/Flickr, (bottom) Ruthdaniel3444/Flickr

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of I-5 Press™, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bedwell-Wilson, Wendy.

Starter coops : for your chickens’ first home / by Wendy Bedwell-Wilson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-935484-77-6

eISBN 978-1-620080-34-4

1. Chickens--Housing. I. Title.

SF494.5.B43 2012

636.5--dc23

2012011721

I-5 Press™

A Division of I-5 Publishing, LLC™

3 Burroughs

Irvine, California 92618

Printed and bound in the United States

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Dedication

Greenhorn chicken keepers, this book is dedicated to you. I hope it helps you create a cozy home-sweet-home for your hens and sets you up for success with your new hobby!

Acknowledgments

This book really exists because of one person: my farmer husband, Ryan. The main man in charge of our livestock and land, he has been my go-to guy for all things chicken. Starter Coops is steeped in his hands-on experience in raising and keeping chickens and building henhouses and chicken coops for them. His love for the hobby has truly inspired this book.

Besides Farmer Ryan, my second go-to resource for chicken keeping is Gail Damerow and her books Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens and The Chicken Health Handbook. These indispensable reference books are packed full of everything you need to know to raise hens—and then some.

I’d also like to offer a big thanks to our local feed store owners Mike and Stan Jackson from Central Feed and Supply in Sutherlin, Oregon, for their on-the-ground chicken advice, as well as Roger Sipe, editor of Chickens magazine, who planted the seed for this book when he asked me to write a regular column, “Coop Corner,” in his bimonthly title.

Of course, Starter Coops’ behind-the-scenes crew deserves a nod too! Special thanks to lead editor Jen Calvert and copy editors Amy Deputato and Jarelle Stein, who turned my manuscript into an easy-to-understand guide for new chicken keepers; editor-in-chief Andrew DePrisco, who believed in the idea; and the production team who made this book a reality.

Finally, I’d like to recognize Jerry, Larry, and Lance, our roosters. Those bad-ass chickens kept our ladies clucking and laying safely and happily. Thanks for being such great guardians and alarm clocks, boys!

Contents

Introduction: Welcome to the Henhouse!

Chapter 1: Coop, Sweet Coop

Chapter 2: Tour de Coops

Chapter 3: Planning Your Coop

Chapter 4: The Nuts and Bolts

Chapter 5: Building Your Coop

Chapter 6: Finishing Touches

Chapter 7: Coop Upkeep

Chapter 8: Troubleshooting

Introduction

Welcome to the Henhouse!

Throughout history, humans have raised chickens for both practical and pleasurable purposes. Families and farmers across the globe kept flocks of birds for eggs, meat, and by-products such as feathers and manure. Extra birds became tradable goods to barter at markets. In short, chickens were a nice commodity to have around.

I’ll never forget my first encounter with domesticated chickens. While visiting my family’s farm in rural Iowa in the 1970s, my cousins and I were tasked with gathering eggs for breakfast. As a six-year-old California native raised in the Silicon Valley suburbs, I had never gazed upon a live chicken, walked into a henhouse, or reached into a nesting box to harvest freshly laid eggs. But once we stepped foot inside the sprawling chicken coop, I marveled at the little birds scurrying and scratching through the soil for seeds, seemingly unperturbed by the young human interlopers. I watched, fascinated, as the cackling roosters steered their ladies toward wriggling earthworms and bright-green grass shoots. I wondered why in the world they didn’t fly away. After we gingerly transferred the still-warm eggs into our woven-willow basket and delivered them to my great aunt, I declared that I, too, would have chickens one day.

Chickens are some of the most rewarding creatures to keep, not just because of the eggs they provide but also for their entertaining personalities.

That day finally came not too long ago. In 2008, my husband and I, relatively inexperienced at the whole farming thing, moved to an 80-acre piece of Pacific Northwest paradise in southern Oregon. Our first order of business: order some fuzzy peeps and raise a chicken coop. It seemed simple at the time—but boy, did we have a lot to learn. First was the matter of housing the baby chicks and keeping them warm and cozy while pinfeathers replaced their downy, dusty fluff. Then, when the birds were mature enough to graduate from the brooder to the newly built henhouse, we discovered (through trial and error) precisely what chickens needed to be happy and healthy as well as to stay safe and secure from resident raccoons, skunks, and coyotes.

Admittedly, the learning curve was steep. But thanks to the helpful feed-store staff, some weathered farmer friends, lots of reading and research, and a few close calls, our entire six-hen-and-one-rooster flock of Rhode Island Reds and Plymouth Barred Rocks survived and thrived through the first season.

Today our flock has grown to twenty-two hens, two roosters, and two Peking ducks. (Heritage breeds are next on our chicken wish list.) Needless to say, we’ve had to make room for our ever-expanding poultry brood. As we’ve deepened our knowledge of chicken keeping and poultry housing, we’ve relocated our chicken yard, made changes to the henhouse configuration, and experimented with nest-box designs. We even have plans to build a chicken tractor so the ladies can fertilize our nutrient-sapped pastureland.

Few things are cuter than a box full of peeps, but these fuzzy little guys will require plenty of attention and effort from you.

While chickens can, of course, provide meat, many keepers feel squeamish about picking off their well-kept flock. Eggs, however, are a natural (and nutritious) by-product of chicken keeping that everyone can appreciate.

Au naturel

Compared with industrial eggs, eggs from hens allowed to feed on pasture contain four times more vitamin D, three times more vitamin E, and seven times more beta-carotene.

As with all things farming, we still have a lot to learn—and always will! But from my coop to yours, I’d like to humbly share what my husband and I (and our chickens) have learned about chicken housing. That’s what this book is all about.

In 2008, we weren’t the only newbie chicken keepers on the block. Countless others across the country (and the world) began to see the value of keeping their own chickens. Whether prompted by the global economic downturn, a trendy return to homesteading, or a growing awareness of factory-farmed birds’ often-deplorable living conditions, people began buying and raising hens like mad. They realized they could inexpensively raise their own organic farm-fresh eggs and meat with no hormones or dangerous chemicals. They could make use of the chickens’ nitrogen-rich manure in their compost piles and vegetable gardens. And they could house the hens in top-notch living quarters rather than in crowded cages. The chicken-keeping resurgence had begun!

In historic terms, chicken keeping is nothing new. Humans have shared their lives with domesticated birds for thousands of years—even as far back as 6000 BC. A Chinese archaeo-zoologist named Chao Benshuh uncovered a large quantity of chicken bones from an archaeological site called the P’ei-li-kang village settlements of T’zu Shan in eastern Asia. Those bones were dated to more than 7,000 years ago, providing evidence of some of the world’s first domesticated chickens, though it’s not known whether these early predecessors were truly related to today’s fowl.

Modern-day chickens likely descended from birds of Indian origin for the purposes of cockfighting in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Believe it or not, early poultry keepers had little interest in chicken meat or eggs. The sport of rooster sparring spread the birds westward, and chickens migrated into eastern Europe along the Mediterranean coasts by around 3000 BC.

Some unsavory characters still enjoy watching cockfights today. Responsible chicken keepers work hard to avoid these kinds of painful brawls.

By 1400 BC, ancient Egyptians recognized the value of chickens for sustenance. Needing to fuel the huge labor force required to build the now-famed pyramids, they developed hatching ovens to mass-produce chickens for their eggs and meat. Historians report that each facility produced 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 chicks per season. The operators lived on the premises and tended the warming ovens. Because they had no thermometers to help regulate the temperature inside, workers relied on their senses to recognize when the fires needed attention. Large-scale peep housing and production have certainly come a long way!

SQUAWK BOX

“While keeping backyard chickens was common 150 years ago, the advent of factory farming and inexpensive store-bought eggs in the 1950s lead to a decline in its popularity. Recently, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in keeping one’s own chickens, both for the pleasure of fresh eggs and for the entertainment pet chickens provide.”

Hilary Stern, DVM

As time passed, chickens continued to flock across Europe. The first pictures of chickens on the Continent appeared on Corinthian pottery from the seventh century BC. Early Greek poets and authors, including Cratinus and Aristophanes, wrote about the birds in their works from the mid-fifth century BC. From 1200 to 200 BC, in ancient Greece and Rome, chickens were reportedly used as oracles in a practice known as alectryomancy, which involves prophesying based on the movements and behaviors of chickens.

After the turn of the century, the Roman agriculture author Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, who lived from around AD 4 to 70, wrote about chicken husbandry in his twelve-volume treatise De Re Rustica. In his eighth book, he identified several cockfighting breeds—Tanagrian, Rhodic, Chalkidic, and Median—and wrote that Roman chickens, a cross between docile native hens and Greek roosters, were better for farming purposes. An ideal flock, he wrote, consisted of 200 birds, which could be guarded and tended by one person on the lookout for predators. He advised early chicken keepers to build three-room chicken coops that faced southeast, adjacent to the kitchen, and that contained a hearth to keep the ladies cozy and warm. He even recommended that early farmers provide dry dust or ash for the chickens to bathe in.

Polynesian seafarers then helped spread chickens across the globe. In the twelfth century AD, chickens reached Easter Island, where they were the only domestic animal and were housed in extremely solid chicken coops built from stone. As time passed, they reached every continent, supplying residents with eggs and meat.

From the late nineteenth century forward, Americans took a liking to chickens. The American Poultry Association, a breed registry, formed in 1873 to document the various chicken breeds raised in the United States. By the 1930s in the United States, chicken farms had begun cropping up both in the country and in nearby cities to feed America’s growing population. Initially, large flocks of free-range birds spent much of their time outdoors and lived in a variety of chicken coops.

As the population’s penchant for poultry increased over the following decades, the free-range farming style transitioned into factory production methods. Factory farms were common by the 1950s. Scientists discovered that chickens would lay more eggs and get fatter faster if they confined the birds indoors and kept the lights on at night.

Though production increased, quality decreased. Large numbers of cooped-up birds required large doses of antibiotics to stave off infections, and poultry farmers had to blunt the birds’ beaks to prevent them from pecking one another. Rather than follow their natural foraging patterns of scratching and pecking for seeds, bugs, and greens in the great outdoors, the chickens were banished to windowless pens and fed a controlled diet of mush.

As you can see, factory farms rob chickens of the pasture-grazing life they’re genetically engineered to lead.

Bird

Brain

According to the USDA, in the United States in 2010:

• The value of all egg production was $6.52 billion (up 6 percent from $6.17 billion in 2009).

• Egg production totaled 91.4 billion eggs (up 1 percent from 90.5 billion eggs produced in 2009).

• The average US resident gobbled down 246.2 eggs.

• The top ten egg-producing states were Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, California, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska, and Florida.

This treatment, which many perceived as inhumane, eventually came to light. As a result, consumers began to demand chickens that were raised in open pens or pastures rather than in cages. They wanted birds that were treated humanely. Some of these outspoken advocates for fair chicken treatment—people like you and me—even decided to raise their own.

If all of the reports in newspapers and magazines are any indication, backyard chicken keeping is a trend that’s here to stay. People have discovered the joys and fringe benefits of owning chickens, so more and more are trying their hand at taking care of their own flocks. These pioneering chicken keepers are in cities and suburbs as well as in the country. At any given moment, more than 10 billion chickens worldwide are clucking happily, laying close to 700 billion eggs each year.

All those chickens need a place to live—chicken coops to call their own—and this book aims to help you design the best coop for your flock. As you flip through these pages, you’ll learn what type of shelter and environment the birds need to thrive. You’ll discover how to care for their dwelling so that it’s a healthy place for your chickens to live. And you’ll use some basic design and construction skills to create chicken coops to suit your needs. You may have noticed in this introduction examples of the helpful tip boxes you’ll find throughout this book. As you’re reading, check out the Squawk Box sidebars for expert advice, the Bird Brain boxes for poultry-keeping facts, and the Au Naturel notes for eco-friendly tips.

Whether you’re an urban or suburban backyard chicken keeper with a few pet birds, a rural hobby farmer with a dozen hens, or a small-flock farmer hoping to pocket some egg or meat money, in the pages that follow, you’ll find just about everything you’ll need to know about making your chickens’ coop their home-sweet-home. If you’re a large-scale poultry farmer, however, this book isn’t for you; the information here is intended to help fanciers plan, build, and maintain their henhouses.

Enjoy!

With proper housing, your chickens will be happy. And if your chickens are happy, you’re happy.

Coop, Sweet Coop

If you’ve picked up this book, you’re interested in one thing: chicken coops. Maybe you’re planning a henhouse for a new flock or building a swanky Shangri-la for your existing brood. Perhaps you’ve inherited some hens from a friend and don’t have a place to house them. Or maybe—if you’re like my husband and me when we started keeping chickens—you’ve already brought home a boxful of peeps and have no idea what to do with them. Don’t worry. We’re here to help.

Along with food and water, adequate housing is one of the most important necessities to provide for your flock, regardless of its size. A well-designed and maintained coop will keep your girls safe, sound, and clucking contentedly. As you’ll see in this chapter, all chicken coops have similar traits and trimmings that relate directly to caring for the birds. The lives of your birds center on their yard and henhouse, and it’s up to you to make their house a home. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Chicken Coop: Defined

Sure, chickens could fend for themselves without a coop, roosting in trees or makeshift shelters like their jungle fowl cousins, but a proper chicken coop with a henhouse gives your birds a predictable, safe place to sleep, eat and drink, lay their eggs, and find shelter from predators and inclement conditions. So, what is a chicken coop? In an eggshell—er, nutshell—a chicken coop is your flock’s home. A coop typically consists of two basic parts: the enclosure, or henhouse, where the chickens nest and roost, and the yard or pen area, the outside area where they can get some fresh air, stretch their wings and legs, and if they’re lucky, scratch and peck for and supplement their diet with all-natural grubs and greens.

Prefabricated coops that can easily be customized using paint or extras such as window boxes and attached enclosures.

The henhouse can be fashioned or retrofitted out of just about any structure. I’ve seen an enclosure made from an old horse trailer, another constructed from a ramshackle shed, and yet another configured from a bathroom vanity. You can also make henhouses from bales of hay, repurposed lumber, or 1×2s and chicken wire. If you’re not that handy, you can purchase a prefabricated house from your local farm store and customize it to fit your unique flock. The birds’ pen can be a small wired-in space, a large fenced pasture, or anything in between.

As your flock’s home, your chicken coop serves some very important purposes, including

 being a safe shelter away from predators and inclement weather;

 providing some dedicated real estate for your hens to call home;

 giving you a place where you can collect the fringe benefits of hen keeping—eggs, manure, and so on; and

 being a place for must-have items and accessories, such as a station for food and water.

To sum up, chicken coops—regardless of size or shape—must be designed to be practical and functional for both the owner and the birds. Your coop should provide adequate shelter, be sized appropriately for your flock, give you easy access to eggs and litter, and be outfitted with the right accessories. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Let’s take a closer look at these different functions and the reasons they’re vital to your flock’s health, happiness, and well-being.

SQUAWK BOX

“All chickens have the same basic requirements to stay healthy: a good-quality diet, a clean environment, and protection from the elements and predators.”

Hilary Stern, DVM

Give Me Shelter

All animals—feathered or otherwise—need food, water, and shelter to survive. One of the most critical functions a chicken coop serves is as a safe, enclosed space for the birds that protects them from predators and the elements. In addition to the varieties I mentioned above, shelter options for your ladies include A-frame structures, a covered stoop or porch, and even bushes and shrubbery—anything that shields them from danger.

A fortress-strong chicken coop is critical to a flock’s health and well-being because, well, chickens are on the wrong end of the food chain. All kinds of predators—from hawks and owls to cats, raccoons, and coyotes—lurk high and low in the city, suburbs, and country. A well-designed and sound chicken coop with plenty of shelter options (including the henhouse) can protect the birds from danger. Simply put, a safe enclosure gives the birds a place to scurry to and hide should danger approach.

No matter what your coop looks like, it should be strong, sturdy, and safe for the chickens that occupy it.

Henhouses and shelters also protect the birds from bad weather conditions. When temperatures climb into the 80s and 90s, the enclosure offers your flock shade. When temperatures dip, it gives your birds a place to huddle together, generating body heat and keeping away from chilling drafts. And when it rains or snows and the wind blows, the shelter provides a warm, dry place for your flock to weather the storm.

Home, Sweet Home

A chicken coop also serves as your flock’s home base. It’s where the birds live. It’s where they go about their day-to-day routines, such as foraging for food, taking dust baths (see page 33), and snoozing. If they’re laying hens, they deposit their eggs in the coop. In short, the coop is where your chickens feel safe and comfortable.

Chickens are so content in their henhouse that they return to their roosts each and every night at dusk, like clockwork, on their own. My husband and I learned that fact when we raised our first flock of birds. New to the hobby and unaware of the birds’ natural homing instinct, we were reluctant to let them out of their wired-in shelter to roam freely in our fenced half-acre yard, afraid that at the end of the day we would have a difficult time getting them back into their coop. Finally, we decided to let them loose and see what happened. To our delight, they returned to their chicken house without us (or our canine chicken herder, Pete) having to (gently) convince them to do so.

Add all the chicken requisites to your coop, and your hens will return to it each evening.

Chickens like predictability. They’re creatures of habit. By providing a home base and a sound structure for them to retire to every night, you’ll minimize their stress and help them feel secure—which ultimately means you’ll have happy chickens and yummy eggs.

Fringe Benefits

If you’re like most backyard chicken keepers, you’re likely raising the birds so you can harvest your own eggs and/or meat and collect the birds’ droppings for your compost heap. A well-designed chicken coop gives you easy access to the goodies inside as well as a way to efficiently clean and sanitize the henhouse.

It’s truly a hobby farmer’s delight to gather fresh eggs for breakfast—but imagine if you had to hunt for them in the chicken yard as you would Easter eggs! Nesting boxes in your chicken coop give the birds a convenient place to lay their eggs in an easy-for-you-to-gather place where they won’t be trampled by scampering chickens, broken or pecked by broody hens, or stolen by egg-loving thieves, such as skunks. Clean, litter-lined nesting boxes also keep the eggs clean and dry.

If you don’t provide nesting boxes for your laying hens, you might come out to find filthy and broken eggs.

While we’re talking about by-products, there’s nothing like aged chicken manure to heat up the soil in your vegetable garden. You could scoop and shovel the nitrogen-dense litter from the henhouse into a wheelbarrow and haul it to your compost pile. However, by incorporating easy-access designs into the coop, such as a sliding tray beneath the birds’ roosts for droppings, you can easily gather and utilize the manure without having to get too messy in the process.

Amenities, Please

Finally, as your girls’ home base, a chicken coop also houses all the accessories the birds will need to thrive. They will need a dedicated station for food and water with easy-to-clean vessels for feed, fresh water, grit, oyster shells, and any other supplement or tasty ingestible. For laying hens, nesting boxes are a must-have, as are perches for roosting safely off the ground at night. The ladies will also benefit from a dust-bath box they can use to keep their feathers clean and parasite-free. These things, which we’ll discuss in detail in the next section, are the little frills that keep chickens happy and healthy. Continue reading and you’ll learn how to incorporate these concepts into your design.

Chickens and gardens are mutually beneficial. You can use your chickens’ manure to fertilize your garden, and you can plant chicken-friendly flora to treat your girls.

Coop Features and Decor

When it comes to making your ladies feel right at home, it’s all about the niceties. Think about it: the features that make your own house a home include cozy comforts such as plush carpeting, an overstuffed couch and big-screen television, central heating and air conditioning, and granite countertops, right? It’s a similar story with chickens. They thrive in a coop with clean and fluffy bedding, private nesting boxes, adequate ventilation, comfortable temperatures, and clean and sanitized food and water dishes.