Keep Chickens In A Good Chicken Coop And You’ve Got Pets And Eggs Together

Keeping some chickens at home could just be the best decision you’ve ever made. There’s plenty of reasons why, but the 2 main reasons are that kids absolutely love chickens and that they will produce eggs for you every day so are they are productive.

But before you start looking to buy some chooks you need to find out a little more about what you house them in. They are generally housed in chicken coops, or what are sometimes called a henhouse or chicken house.

Whether you buy or build a chicken coop doesn’t matter, it’s perfectly possible to build one using simple second-hand materials that you scrounge from the neighbours, and is reasonably cheap to build. A good chicken coop is really just a garden shed with a number of modifications.

There are a few specific things that you will need to install in your henhouse before you get your first bunch of chooks. They will need nesting boxes to lay their eggs, and to sit on those eggs if you let them build up, and it is worth having more than one nesting box even if you only have a small number of hens. Make them small so that only one chook can fit in the nesting box at one time or you will find 2 of them are battling for position at the same time to lay their eggs.

And it’s also important that they be relatively dark, as chickens like to nest in dark places, and if they aren’t dark they will choose somewhere darker, like the corner of the chicken coop.

As well as nesting boxes you will need perches for the chooks to sleep on, as they sleep standing up above the ground, as if they were on a branch. A simple bar around 75 millimetres by 50 a little way off the ground is sufficient, and allow around 200 millimetres of horizontal space for every bird.

Of course they will need food and water, which you can provide either inside the hen house,  or outside, as long as it is sheltered.

But if you provide the food or water in the chicken coop do not put it underneath the perches or it will become contaminated with droppings.

Of course some responsibilities come with keeping chickens, in particular cleaning the henhouse. You need a nice soft material on the floor of the henhouse, my preference is sawdust which soaks up droppings, though of course needs to be removed from time to time. And it makes a wonderful fertiliser put it on the garden.

Collecting eggs every day is the best part of keeping chickens, and your own free range eggs always taste better than the supermarket variety. If you have too many just ask a few neighbours, there will always be some who will buy them from you.

There are many pets that you can consider for the children. However it’s difficult to think of a another idea for a pet that will provide you with a useful product as well as being a good companion for the children.

And there’s no doubt that kids love chickens, ours absolutely adore them.

So why not research a little about keeping chickens. Decide whether to buy or build a chicken coop, where you will put it and how you will clean it and then get your first bunch of chooks. You won’t regret it.