A backyard chicken coop is a excellent project for any household to embrace. If you're up to it you can even breed chickens for meat, and free eggs will save you a heap of cash. A common design of chicken coop is the a-frame. This particular article provides you with some pre-construction ideas, and shows you the next phase to simple, powerful a-frame chicken coop designs.
Coop And Flock Size
Naturally it is essential to provide your flock with sufficient room to graze. A-frame coops will normally hold about Five birds. If you're not prepared to build this style of coop large enough to give at least 3 square feet per chicken, you might consider a bigger design.
Other straightforward coop plans are:
- The "chicken ark", which is essentially a 2-storey a-frame chicken coop.
- The box-shaped coop having discrete nesting area.
A lot of the better quality, internet-based chicken coop designs will provide you with several coop designs within one package.
Planning Your Yard
It's usually easiest to build the a-frame coop on-site, even though the majority of coops are transportable. It simply saves time, effort, and enables you to understand how things are shaping up whilst you construct. if something doesn't look right you can adjust it right there and
Ensure that you do the following, before you start building:
- Take into account how much sunlight is provided in your back yard. Chickens have very delicate sleep cycles, and the sun is the ideal way of getting them in to a good rhythm. Position the coop so that there is plenty of sunshine in the morning.
- What kind of potential predators are in your geographic location? You're going to need to either predator-proof the coop. Alternatively, secure your entire yard. Foxes, snakes, and dogs are generally the most common animal pests. The majority of chicken coop designs will explain to you how to build the required safeguards.
- Consider the proximity to resources. You might want to be close to electricity if you want to breed chicks, though for most people this will mean the water supply. Installing a warming lamp will help considerably with this.
A properly designed A-frame coop will not be expensive to construct. It should have capacity for multiple perches, a nesting area and a location to eat and drink.
Fresh air is essential for the health of your flock. It offers the necessary oxygen to the birds and in addition moves out the stale air. A wire mesh A-frame coop generally supplies sufficient air flow.
by Alison Benjamin