Sooner or later, most landowners think about how to make a chicken coop. It is unwise not to use the opportunity to independently provide your family with environmentally friendly and safe products. This can save you a significant amount of money. And the construction of a bird habitat cannot be called a difficult undertaking.
Proper Build: Preparation
How to make a chicken coop? Where to start building? First of all, you need to think over an action plan for building a home for chickens. It should include the following items:
- choosing the most suitable location on the property;
- create a building project;
- stock supplies;
- construction activities;
- indoor decoration.
Selection of a site for work
To understand how to make a chicken coop with your own hands, you need to consider where it will be placed. The right place -recipe for success. What should you pay attention to first of all? The place where the laying hens live must be safe. The area on which the house will be located must be enclosed by a fence or hedge. It is also important to provide laying hens with peace. Accordingly, construction should be carried out in those areas that are relatively distant from walkways and places of active recreation.
The ideal location for this room would be a shaded area that can be planted with shrubs, which will help protect the birds from the wind and sun. And if the vegetation is also interesting to the birds, for example, the available berries, this is an additional advantage. The building must be located on a small hill. This will make it possible to avoid flooding the structure during rains.
Drafting
A habitual bird dwelling is considered to be an inconspicuous gray building. You shouldn't take this approach. To create better conditions and improve the quality of life for birds, it is still better to build a beautiful and spacious house. Use your imagination and the laying hen shelter will become an original element of landscape design. Then the question of how to make a chicken coop with your own hands in the same way will be asked to you. After all, the bird house will be in sight anyway. Do not spoil the impression of admiring your land due to a careless attitude to construction.
When creating your own unique project and thinking, for example, about how to make a chicken coop for 10 chickens, you should consider that forgreater productivity of the case, the size of housing for birds must comply with the norms. The dimensions of the house should be designed so that there are no more than 2 layers per square meter.
Start of construction
After the size, design and location of the house are determined, it is necessary to think about the required materials for construction. You may be attracted to the trends of the modern world, gleaned from the Internet, or the stories of lovers of unconventional design solutions about how to make a chicken coop with your own hands. But it should be understood that the best material for construction in this case is wood. It is important that the bars at the same time be four-sided and have a thickness of 1015 centimeters. This option is not too expensive, but reliable. Another advantage of wood is that it is environmentally friendly and easy to process.
In addition to beams, for the construction of a capital chicken coop, you will also need concrete, insulation, brick, roofing felt, expanded clay, plywood sheets and fasteners.
Choice of foundation
The foundation can be tape or rubble. You can also install bird housing on piles. In this case, it is important to determine how to make a chicken coop with your own hands more profitable. The opinions of professionals in this matter most often converge on the installation of a columnar foundation. In addition to being more cost-effective than other options, it is also easier to implement. You only need cement in the amount of about two bags, sand and a trowel. The columnar type of foundation will prevent in the futurepenetration of rodents into the chicken coop, and will also contribute to better ventilation.
If this option is difficult, then you can limit yourself to the minimum way to install bird housing on the ground. To do this, it is enough to upholster the lower part of the chicken coop with sheets of iron.
Installation of cement foundation
The territory necessary for construction should be cleared of vegetation. Then you need to dig a hole, which should be flat and have a depth of at least 30 centimeters. At its bottom it is necessary to lay a galvanized metal mesh. Further along the perimeter, formwork should be built and another hole should be dug, stepping back 25 centimeters from the first. Now you need to pour a solution of concrete and cover the foundation with burlap. Need to wait a few days. After the cement has completely dried, the boards should be removed, and the soil remaining after digging the holes should be filled in their place.
Laying the floor
If you are faced with the question of what to make the floor in the chicken coop, then it is better to give preference to the classical technique. It is necessary to lay the roofing material, which isolates the first crown of beams (the main, horizontal row of the log house), their ends must communicate. Then you should place logs (cross beams) on the floor at a distance of 50 cm from each other. The gaps between them need to be sealed with bars.
Installation of walls
The following crowns, from which the walls of the chicken coop are already being built, are connected by a tenon-groove fastener. Between the rows of wood must be laidinsulation, which has a linen jute base.
Whenever a chicken coop is built from wood with natural moisture, it needs to be mounted on dowels (special fastening nails). For them, you need to make holes at intervals of 1 meter. Wooden pins are driven in a secret way to a depth of 7 centimeters. This method is a recommendation for those who do not know how to make a chicken coop with their own hands so that it does not warp in case of shrinkage.
The correct option for building bird housing has a wall height of at least 1.8 meters.
Shaping the roof
The best option for bird housing is a gable roof. The attic, which is formed during its construction, can be used to store inventory or feed. To create such a roof, you need to install a carrier system consisting of rafter inclined legs and struts, vertical racks. Now you can lay the roof. The ceiling inside the chicken coop needs to be insulated and covered with plywood.
How to make a roost in a chicken coop?
First and foremost, a roost for a chicken is to ensure its safety. When a bird sits on it, it can survey the surroundings and feel comfortable on a raised platform. It is advisable to place the perch near the windows of the chicken coop, in a sufficiently lit place. Behind the perch, there should be nothing but a blank wall.
An important parameter for a perch is its height. For young animals, this figure is approximately 0.6 meters from the floor, for large chickensbreeds - 0, 8, for ordinary laying hens - 1 meter. It is more reasonable to make fastenings for a perch on the walls at different levels. This will allow you to change the height of the perches as needed.
Roost is also necessary for the birds to be in good physical shape. After all, in order to climb it, they need to jump up and take off. The total length of the available perches should be calculated based on the fact that one chicken requires 20-30 centimeters of space on them.
Creating additional conditions
If there is no natural light in the chicken coop, artificial lighting must be created. A light bulb with a power of 40 watts is quite suitable for this. Under the perch, it is recommended to install trays to facilitate the cleaning of the chicken coop. Feeders and drinkers are placed on some elevation. They should always be full and clean. For laying hens, you need to install a dark box in the corner of the chicken coop. It is recommended to break the floor with sawdust or straw. To make it convenient for the birds to get into your house, if it is on a hill or if they enter it not through the door, but through the window, you can install a ladder or ladder. The same method is also useful in case of finding perches in small rooms of chicken coops, so that when you try to take off on them, injuries do not occur.
If you are interested in other ways to make a chicken coop, the photo selection provided in the article will help with this.
