Do-it-yourself chicken coops for laying hens

Microclimate

Not only the correct construction of the barn is very important, but also the creation of the necessary conditions for the normal life of chickens.

Ventilation

The room in which the chickens will live must be well ventilated in order for the bird to be healthy. Ventilation is especially important in the summer, in order to avoid the development of microbes, parasites, timely air purification and drying of the bedding.

Usually, ventilation is holes made in opposite walls. Such openings must have valves so that it is possible to close them in the cold.

Did you know? The period of darkness for chickens is very important for the formation of bone tissue, changes in calcium metabolism, which is responsible for the density of the shell, and the development of immunity.

Lighting

To illuminate the house, you can use fluorescent lamps with a power of at least 40 watts. For every 4 square meters of the room, one device is installed. The light source should be located in such a way that there is a distance of at least 2 m from the floor.

When organizing lighting in a chicken coop, it should be borne in mind that there is always high humidity in such a room, so when wiring, installing lamps and switches, it is necessary to place the shield outside the poultry house. To prevent the chickens from getting burned or getting an electric shock, a thick ceiling is installed on the lamps. In winter, lighting in the coop allows you to stimulate the performance of layers, it is optimal if daylight hours are extended to 13 hours a day. Be sure to turn on the lighting early in the morning, and in the evening, when it gets dark outside, the light should be on in the chicken coop for at least another 3 hours.

In order not to get up very early every morning and not visit the chicken coop late in the evening, it is recommended to set a timer that will control the periods of turning on the lights in the house on its own.

Find out what lighting should be in the chicken coop.

Temperature + how to insulate for the winter

Chickens are resistant to temperature extremes, so the air temperature in the room can be in the range of + 5 ... + 23 ° С. With an increase in air temperature in the chicken coop, the bird will not feel comfortable when the value goes beyond +30 degrees, the chicken may stop laying, chickens become vulnerable to infectious and parasitic diseases. If in winter, the air temperature in the chicken coop drops below +5 degrees, the room should be insulated. To insulate the barn, a thick layer of bedding (straw, sawdust) is poured onto the floor. Initially, natural material is scattered on the floor with a thickness of 10 cm, then, as it subsides, it is poured 2 more times, increasing the amount of the embankment to 20 cm.

Planning Nuances

For construction, you can use ready-made drawings, although their presence is not required. The design of any barn for domestic animals is not particularly difficult, the main thing is to choose the right dimensions and outline the location inside the necessary fixtures: livestock stalls, bird perches, feeders, drinkers, etc. You can draw a conditionally approximate plan by hand, but be sure mark on it the necessary requirements officially imposed on such buildings.

Table 1. Basic requirements for sheds for domestic animals

Dimensions	They are determined on an individual basis, depending on the number of individuals. For 10 chickens, you will need an area of 3-4 square meters. For one goat, you need about 2-4 m2, for a cow - 7-9 m2. You also need to consider space for feeders and other equipment. The height of the premises can also be different: for a barn - at least 2 m, for a goat house and a pigsty - 1.5 m.
Availability of space for walking	For chickens and rabbits, a walking area is not necessary with a cellular type of content. Otherwise, it can be made quite small. For goats, sheep and cows, you need to fence at least 10 square meters.Pigs most often do not need a pasture either, but a very small area can be fenced near their barn to expand their living space - physical activity increases appetite, and piglets grow faster.
Windows and doors	There should be enough windows so that the room is light. It is desirable to make them glazed, with detachable transoms. Arrange most of the window openings on the south side. Doors can be made on the opposite. The openings should be wide so that through them it is possible to freely take out waste products and bring food inside. In the barn, it makes sense to make double doors.
Ventilation and insulation	All cracks in the walls are carefully sealed - there should be no drafts in the room. But at the same time, there should be good ventilation in the barn. The barn and the poultry house need to be additionally insulated, if we are talking about regions with severe winters, then it makes sense to also conduct heating. Even in the most severe cold indoors, the temperature cannot fall below 8-10 degrees.
Internal layout	For all animals and birds, you need to install a sufficient number of drinkers and feeders. In the goat house and barn, it is desirable to make hotel stalls for each individual, and in addition, to fence off corners for keeping females with cubs. The same must be done for sows with piglets. For chickens, low perches are necessarily made, for laying hens, as well as for laying ducks and geese, nests are built.

Sample drawings of animal and poultry sheds

How to build a poultry shed

The farm may contain chickens, quails, turkeys, geese and ducks. Premises for different types of birds by and large differ only in size. For turkeys and waterfowl, as well as for broilers, more spacious sheds will be needed. Although there are a number of other nuances. For example, turkeys are heat-loving, so they need to maintain a high temperature in the house. Chickens need perches, and ducks and geese do not need such an interior detail.

It is better to make a foundation for a poultry house of a tape type - made of concrete, so that mice, rats and small predators, such as ferrets, cannot penetrate under the floor. The depth of the base may not be too large - 25 cm is enough.

Wooden beams are erected at the corners of the future structure, horizontal partitions are made of narrow boards between them. Then the building is sheathed with plywood. On the south side, two or three windows under the ceiling should be cut. The door is made not too wide and high. For the birds themselves, you can equip a separate hole. The roof is made in one slope, you can cover it with reeds or straw, and put roofing material or slate on top. Be sure to take out the ventilation pipes.

Walking poultry house

Building a barn for laying hens with your own hands

It is very profitable to breed laying hens on your plot, because they are a good source of additional income and products.

Chickens, like people, need a solid and spacious house, where they can sleep peacefully all year round, without fear of wind, rain, or cold. And for this you need a barn that you can easily make with your own hands, without involving builders and buying expensive materials. Simple ways to build a cozy "house" for chickens will be discussed with interest in our article.

What should be the barn for laying hens?

Anyone, even a novice farmer, knows that chickens are very sensitive to the conditions in which they live. And if the conditions are not so good, it can seriously affect the health of the birds.

What materials are suitable for building a barn?

For a capital shed, materials will be needed from which it will be possible to build a foundation and build the shed itself. In general, the following materials are suitable for such a design:

concrete blocks or bricks (for the foundation);
cement mortar;
sand;
OSB boards;
wooden boards and bars;
metal constructions;
sheathing material (lining, plywood, etc.);
insulation.

In addition, you should stock up on tools: self-tapping screws, nails, metal corners, a screwdriver, a hammer, brushes, a grinding tool, etc.

Thermal insulation of the barn

Maintaining heat in the chicken coop at any time of the year is an important issue when breeding chickens. When building a barn, it is better to immediately make sure that the floor, walls and roof of the future structure are insulated with special materials.

Styrofoam, felt, sawdust, straw are suitable as a heater. For example, when insulating with foam, it should be plastered so that chickens cannot peck at it.

It is necessary to insulate the walls of the barn both from the outside of the structure, and inside, between the sheathing material. The roof should be insulated with felt from the inside, and the floor can be covered with a dense layer of sawdust or straw.

How to make a DIY chicken shed: step by step guide

To begin with, the master needs to carry out preparatory work. Namely:

Consider a barn made from OSB sheets. Today it is one of the most popular types of designs. About everything in order.

How to avoid building errors?

In order for the barn to serve the hens for a long time, the owner must remember a few important building tips.

The size of the barn should be calculated based on the rule: 1 square meter for every 4 chickens. It is better to immediately take into account a small margin for future offspring of individuals.
It is better to first fill the floor of the structure with a concrete screed or lay a brick, and only then cover it with boards. This will protect the birds from invading predators.
When planning year-round keeping of chickens, it is better to provide a vestibule in the barn.
The temperature in the finished barn should not exceed 16 degrees. Otherwise, the chickens will suffer from thirst. At more than 29 degrees, egg production will decrease in birds, and the shell will be much thinner.
You can not allow the cold in the barn. This causes the chickens to get sick and die. It is better to think well in advance how thermal insulation will be carried out and install it even during construction, without delaying until the onset of cold weather.

Hatching and food eggs have different shelf life. Read more about this in our article.

Feeding broiler chickens has its own characteristics. All the nuances are described here.

Shed interior fittings

To begin with, nests, feeders, drinkers and perches must be placed inside the chicken house.

They should be located separately from each other at a considerable distance. Otherwise, there will be piling up and mess in the shed.

For example, it is better to install perches in the darkest, quietest and warmest part of the barn, where the hens will be most comfortable to rest. This also applies to the installation of nests. They can be wooden boxes separated from each other by a dense opaque film.

As for feeders and drinkers, it is best to place them separately from resting places, so that it is convenient to clean and change food and water. This part of the shed should be well lit.

To maintain a sufficient level of heat in the barn, you can install an additional heater, and to avoid excessive moisture, a special ventilation device. Humidity should not exceed 60%.

Building a barn for laying hens with your own hands is a simple matter

But it is important to responsibly approach the preparation of all the necessary materials, correctly calculate the dimensions and follow all the recommendations and tips that were described in this article.

How to build a barn for pigs, cattle and small cattle

For larger pets, a capital building made of brick, concrete or aerated concrete blocks is better suited. The barn should be made spacious so that it is comfortable for livestock and people caring for it. Cows, goats and sheep are regularly milked, so there should be enough space inside to carry out such a procedure. Six square meters are provided for one cow, two to four square meters for a goat and a sheep. m.The room should have wide passages and large doors so that it is convenient to remove manure and bring in food every day.

Video - Shed for keeping animals

First, a foundation is made of bricks or blocks, facing it with concrete. The base is laid in a pre-dug trench with a depth of about 0.6 m. Next, corners are made from the blocks, they are aligned using a level and a plumb line. After that, guides are installed - vertical bars, which are attached to the blocks with brackets. A cord is stretched between them in order to see how to make even masonry. Now you need to build walls - about 2-2.5 m high. Then it is recommended to putty the seams from the inside to avoid drafts.

The roof is double pitched. The floor is poured with concrete, be sure to make grooves for the drainage of urine and liquid waste. A boardwalk is laid on top of individual shields that can be changed. The internal space is delimited by separate stalls, each has a personal feeder and drinker. It is worth running electricity to the barn, and plumbing to the large cowshed and pigsty. Running water helps a lot with daily cleaning.

The barn should be spacious, with separate stalls inside

Types of chicken coops

Today on the Internet you can find drawings of a variety of chicken sheds. But conditionally, they are all divided into two main types:

Winter. Suitable for year-round poultry keeping.
Summer. Such buildings are also called seasonal. They are used to keep poultry in the warm season.

Each of the listed varieties of the house involves its own characteristics and nuances of construction.

Winter

Winter poultry houses involve year-round keeping of chickens, therefore, their planning and construction are especially carefully approached. It is worth noting that such a building is erected not for a season, but for several years. Therefore, it is placed permanently and the location is clearly planned.

Before installation, be sure to make a solid foundation. The walls are built of thick wooden boards, brick or stone. When using boards, each wall must be insulated. Insulation materials are also laid under the roof and in all the cracks that remain during the construction process.

In the winter chicken coop, artificial lighting is required. The number of lamps is selected based on the area of \u200b\u200bthe building. Also, without fail, a paddock is equipped near the barn. It must be equipped with a roof, and the northern wall of the site must be made of dense material without gaps.

Summer

Summer-type structures are used to keep poultry exclusively in the warm season. As a rule, they are used in small farms, whose owners acquire several birds in the spring for eggs, and slaughter them in the fall.

Such a building is not permanently located for several seasons. In addition, it is much easier to build a chicken barn in the summer version than a capital winter one.

The design of such a house can be very different. For several birds, you can build a small wooden box with a mesh extension. Also, breeders often purchase ready-made models of summer chicken coops, consisting of sandwich panels. After the purchase, such a product is assembled at home in a couple of hours, no special skills are required during assembly.

Ready-made portable chicken coops, which are manufactured by individual enterprises, are also popular. This design assumes low weight and special wheels for ease of transportation.

But regardless of the design option chosen, each summer chicken coop should have the following elements:

the shed itself;
a small walk;
drinkers and feeders;
perch;
nest in which the hen will lay her eggs.

Add a chicken coop to the barn

Then the idea came up to combine a barn with a chicken coop, to make such a townhouse, on one side of the shovel on the other chicken. Well, or at least have such an opportunity.

Minimum requirements for the chicken coop - dimensions, etc.:

Searches in Runet did not bring anything, everything was mostly built from shit and sticks, or ordinary sheds were used as chicken coops, and there was no need to talk about some chips, for example, like “Roll out nesting box”

Due to the price, commercial offers also left much to be desired, compare the prices of ready-made chicken coops for yourself:

Prices for ready-made chicken coops

On English-language sites, I was more or less able to find something suitable, albeit not quite. But at least giving an idea of what it might look like: