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It just so happened that in the country house it’s not a dog that is a man’s friend, but ordinary domestic chickens. The main life cycle of domestic chickens coincides with the period of active work in the country. There is enough space and food in the summer cottage, it remains to build a small summer chicken coop with your own hands in order to save and increase the chicken tribe until autumn.
How to organize a dacha life for a chicken
It is rare that summer residents decide on the seasonal maintenance of a chicken tribe without building a chicken coop. Even if for the summer period you enclose part of the site with a chain-link, and use the barn as a chicken coop, it will be very difficult to save the livestock. In addition to dietary meat and traditional eggs, chickens provide a sufficient amount of chicken manure. Therefore, in order not to collect both products throughout the site, it is easier to make a simple chicken coop in the country with your own hands.
Regardless of where and how to build a chicken house, a summer chicken coop must meet several basic requirements:
- The building must be strong and rigid enough so that the weather or a small predator cannot cause the slightest harm to the bird. Chickens, like any domestic animal, easily succumb to panic and fear, therefore, even in the summer version of the chicken coop, there must be a solid room where you can hide;
- Any building for chickens should be planned as a chicken coop with a range. The ability to nibble grass, dig in the ground, and bask in the sun is vital to good bird health;
- The summer version of the building for chickens should be easy to clean, disinfected with lime and freed from litter in a timely manner.
Do not cover the summer version of the chicken coop with metal or corrugated board. The calculation that the scorching rays of the sun will be able to disinfect the building is extremely wrong. Most of the pathogenic microorganisms will not die, and the chickens clearly do not like the hot building after a hot day. Even a summer chicken coop should be disinfected and cleaned at least once a week.
Most often, the calculation of the size of a summer chicken coop is performed according to the norm: four chickens per square area of u5bu10bthe house. The paddock area for walking should be at least four times larger. A chicken coop for XNUMX hens will take no more than XNUMX m2, considering 1,5 m2 for a perch, the same for a canopy with a vestibule, and the rest 6-7 m2 go for walking, fenced with a net.
But in practice, most summer residents are racking their brains in search of a solution on how to make the size of the corral for summer walking in the chicken coop as large as possible without prejudice to summer cottages. The goal is simple – chickens, by their nature, must be actively moving and able to graze on the growing grass.
There are even projects of summer pens made in the form of tunnels from a chain-link mesh folded into a half arc, photo. The owners from time to time rearrange the tunnels throughout the site. For all its unusualness, with such a scheme for walking, chickens have the opportunity to develop vitamin-rich vegetation and pasture without harming the beds.
If the egg and meat are not intended for sale, it is better to abandon premixes and ready-made mixtures in favor of ordinary wheat, corn, and what is available in the beds.
Materials for building a summer chicken coop
The summer version of the chicken coop is traditionally built from boards and slabs. Forget about any OSB, chipboard, fiberboard, plastic, and even more so sip panels. Firstly, the assembly of a summer cottage building from an edged board will cost much less, and secondly, the materials should not contain any resins and polymers that chickens can easily peck from the surface of the walls.
The second condition is the possibility of processing the inner surface of the walls of the summer chicken coop building with lime and sanitary liquids. Wood will absorb the solution by 1,5-2 mm, metal or OSB will not absorb anything at all, and lime will not even stick to plastic.
The best roofing for building a summer chicken coop is shingles. It does not rot, does not rattle under raindrops, and at the same time it has sufficient strength to protect against a marten or a hawk.
In addition to the board, a chain-link mesh is widely used to build a summer chicken coop. A corral is made from the net, and the floor and basement parts of the summer building are reinforced to protect against rats and weasels.
Any external, that is, wooden parts of the building that are not immersed in the ground, are impregnated with antiseptics and whitewashed with lime mortar. Varnishes and paints on any basis for the summer chicken coop are not welcome.
Many summer residents, when solving the problem of how to make the construction of a chicken coop more durable, use fatty varieties of ordinary clay. A layer of material, 1-2 cm thick, can be whitewashed or painted with a water-based emulsion. Coating or plastering a building with a mixture of fat clay with horse manure and rye straw filler allows you to solve three problems at once:
- The mixture provides excellent preservation of the wooden frame of the building, even without the use of toxic chemicals;
- Good sound and heat insulation will provide a cool atmosphere inside the building in the heat and comfortable conditions even with slight frosts on the ground;
- The cost of such a finish will cost a penny, and with strict observance of the technology, the plaster will last for at least a dozen years, and under the open sun it becomes stronger every year.
For a summer chicken coop, you can use a cosmetic version of plaster with a thickness of 5-6 mm. To prevent cracking of the protective layer, a paint grid is used. This coating allows you to provide normal protection for wood.
A similar mixture can be used to equip an adobe floor if the summer building is located directly on the ground. To make an adobe base, you will need to remove the top layer of earth to a depth of 15 cm. Next, a thin layer of sand and gravel is poured to the bottom, a protective mesh is laid, and the upper part is covered with oily clay soaked in water 4-5 cm thick. After absorption part of the moisture with sand, the layer is compacted with a wooden tamper. After each cleaning of the litter, the floor surface is wiped with liquid clay with lime, which has natural antiseptic properties.
The most interesting designs of summer chicken coops
Before starting the search for a drawing of a summer building suitable for the design, first of all, it is necessary to determine the main parameters – the size of the chicken coop and the number of chickens.
If you plan to build a chicken coop for broilers with your own hands, then it is worth remembering that such a building is somewhat different from a room for ordinary chickens. A chicken coop for laying hens can be made with high springboards and parapets, perch poles are placed in increments of 45-50 cm to 1 m, nests can be built at a height of 70-90 cm. For broilers, the installation height of poles is reduced to 30-40 cm, nests feeders are installed directly on the floor or on a small podium. The reason is quite simple – broilers with a large mass have relatively weak bones, so a fall from a perch pole often leads to serious injuries.
Summer chicken coop design for several chickens
The simplest version of a summer chicken coop can be built in one day, having at your disposal 12-14 m of wooden lath, 5 meters of linear metal mesh and 7 m2 plywood. The design of the summer building for chickens is shown in the drawing.
The general device can be read in the figure below. The summer building is made in the form of a symmetrical gable structure, the upper part of which is sewn up with plywood and set aside for a house. At a height of 70 cm, a floor is sewn, which also serves as a ceiling for the lower compartment.
The dimensions of the base of the summer chicken coop 153×244 cm provide a normal range and habitation of 5-6 chickens. The frame of the building is made of a wooden slat or beam, a vent and a hatch are cut out in the upper part of the summer chicken coop, allowing you to open the house and take out the laid eggs, clean, add food and water to the feeder and drinker.
The section of the summer building is an isosceles triangle. Each of the slopes is made according to the above drawing. Initially, longitudinal lag strips are cut out, the ends are cut at an angle of 60о and 30о respectively. Transverse boards are sewn onto the logs, on which plywood will be stuffed and a protective mesh will be stretched. After assembly, using the drawing of the outer frame, a floor is stuffed inside from segments and the remains of an edged board, on which it is desirable to lay a steel sheet so that the litter remains inside the building, and does not wake up when cleaning on the chickens’ heads.
After assembly, wooden slats can be treated with an antiseptic, rinse the surface thoroughly with water. The internal surfaces of the building must be treated with lime.
The floor at the lower level is not provided for by the design, which, in fact, fits into the idea of using a summer chicken coop. Every two or three days, the building is moved to a new location with clean grass, thereby eliminating the need to clean the poultry paddock.
Such a summer chicken coop scheme is perfect for the first bird breeding trials, since a house for 5 chickens for a summer residence is still not enough to provide for an ordinary family of three or four people. As you gain practical experience in caring for chickens, you can choose a more practical full-size version of the summer chicken coop.
Country version of a summer chicken coop for 10 laying hens
The given design of the summer chicken coop is carried out on a light foundation of stone and brick, laid on a sand-filled area. The chicken house is built according to the classic frame scheme of timber and 20 mm edged boards. Such a chicken coop can no longer be moved around the site, so the place for the summer building must be determined once, best under a tree.
The highlight of the project is a canopy over the summer paddock for walking chickens. Cellular polycarbonate is used as the roofing material, and the canopy supports are used as posts for the protective mesh.
The floor in the summer paddock is sandy with the addition of pebbles and ash. Periodically, the sandy base has to be removed and replaced with a new layer. The low location of the entrance hatch allows you to use the chicken coop for breeding almost any breed of chickens, and the spacious summer house can accommodate 10 – 20 broilers or 30 laying hens.
Conclusion
The most rational for breeding chickens in a summer cottage can be considered stationary summer chicken coops built from boards and timber. Without insulation, the premises are able to winter normally without loss of structural qualities. At the beginning of the season, it is enough to carry out sanitization from insects and mice, and a batch of young animals can be settled in the chicken coop.
