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Breeding a bird is a troublesome business and requires stable care for the bird tribe. In the conditions of a suburban or summer cottage, such conditions, as a rule, do not exist, therefore, in the vast majority, they build a chicken coop in the country with their own hands for a small number of birds, a maximum of five to seven chickens. Alternatively, a simple wooden poultry house can be ordered from a carpenter or you can buy any of the ready-made chicken coops for the dacha, sold at exhibitions and specialized stores. Most often, this is a small chicken coop with a paddock, designed for the summer version of keeping birds in the country, from March to November.
Which option for a bird house to prefer
Old and experienced poultry farmers say: “build as for yourself.” For chickens, even the simplest chicken coop is their home. If, after the completion of construction, you can sit inside the built chicken shed for a couple of hours without much discomfort, then the bird living in the country will also be pleased.
There are quite a few ways and options to build a chicken coop in the country with your own hands, ranging from brick rooms to carved log huts and grooved boards. The most popular for giving is considered a simple chicken coop, which is easy to assemble yourself from OSB boards, plywood or unedged boards on a frame made of wooden beams, as in the video:
The use of wood as a building material allows you to get a number of additional advantages of a log house for a summer residence in comparison with sandwiches or brick premises:
- The wooden structure of the chicken room is light and at the same time durable, which does not require a major foundation;
- The use of timber and boards allows you to do 99% of all work in the chicken coop with your own hands in the country, even if there are no professional skills of a carpenter or carpenter;
- The wooden structure of the chicken coop can be easily supplemented and changed without a radical restructuring of the premises.
Unlike most modern building materials, wood does not frighten chickens, the wooden walls of the room have sufficient sound insulation so as not to hear rain or wind, and at the same time they convey the sounds and steps of the movement of night visitors well. The disadvantages of a wooden chicken coop include poor protection from rats and mice that can enter poultry houses for grain and steal eggs.
How to choose a place for the construction of a chicken coop in the country
When choosing a place in the country for placing a residence for chickens, they are guided by the same principles as when installing any other wooden building. The morning sun should illuminate the windows and the entrance to the chicken coop to the maximum, warming up the cooled room and ridding it of excess moisture. In the midday heat, the chicken coop must be protected from direct sunlight, therefore, if possible, the room is placed under the crown of the tallest tree in the country house or is covered with a cloth awning.
The place for installing a chicken coop is best removed from the cottage building and beds, which, like a magnet, will attract chickens to themselves. There should be no cesspools or compost pits, sewers or other sources of infection near the paddock.
An excellent solution is to build a chicken coop in the form of an extension to the cottage building. This makes it easier to heat the room and control the condition of the chickens. Often a chicken coop is attached to the summer kitchen in the country, but if it is not heated in winter, there is not much point in such a decision.
We build a wooden chicken coop in the country house
Before you build a chicken coop, you will need to make a simple sketch, or better a drawing with a layout for the location and internal structure of the chicken coop in the country. The average area norm is calculated – two chickens per square usable area. Thus, for 5 chickens, 2,5m will be required2, and another 30% must be added under three sockets. As a result, the theoretically calculated area of a five-bed house will be 3,2 m2, but in practice, for living five chickens in the country, a small chicken coop is suitable, less than or about 2,8 m2, with a ceiling height of 1,8 m, photo.
We will build a room for chickens in the country, taking into account the following features:
- As a foundation, a cast columnar foundation, typical for a summer residence, is best suited;
- The housing for chickens is made on the basis of a frame made of timber 100×50;
- The floor, ceiling and side walls are sheathed with a tongue-and-groove board;
- The roof is assembled according to a simple single-pitched pattern with a 50-60 cm overhang of the high side of the slope.
The device of the foundation and the frame of the chicken coop
After choosing a place in the country for the construction of a chicken coop, it is necessary to make a preliminary marking of the soil and the level of water occurrence. If the soil in the country house in the spring, after the snow melts and flood waters, remains damp for a long time, most likely the water level is high enough, so you will need to make a full drainage and connect the pipe to the general drainage system of the country house.
After marking the contour of the future chicken coop, we tear off five holes 50 cm deep for casting or laying out foundation pillars. At any summer cottage there is an old wire that can be used as reinforcement, and trimming boards for making formwork. The dimensions of the supports are 15×15 cm, with a height above the ground of at least 30 cm. After the concrete has set, we clean the upper end of the pillars and align them with a common horizon.
We assemble the strapping of the basement of the future chicken coop from the timber and lay the logs. To protect chickens from rats and mice that hunt in abundance around the dacha, we stretch a thin-mesh metal mesh onto the timber, with a margin of at least 50 cm on the sides.
At the next stage, you will need to install the corner posts of the frame, align it vertically and knock it down with temporary jumpers from the slab. After installing the upper strapping belt from the timber and ceiling beams, the walls, floor and ceiling of the room are sewn up with a grooved and unedged board, which can be found in the country.
To equip the roof of the chicken coop, you can use roofing materials left over from the roof of the cottage, for example, old slate or metal. Bituminous tiles or ondulin are considered the best option, but experts recommend slate for summer cottages, as they are resistant, non-combustible and resistant to the teeth of predators.
Finishing and arrangement of the chicken coop
The entrance to the chicken coop and the paddock must be positioned so that it is easily visible from the beds or the porch of the cottage. In the summer, chickens like to roost at sunset, and the timing of closing the door to the chicken house must be constantly monitored. In order to be able to see how and when the chickens entered the chicken coop, from any point in the cottage, a lamp can be installed above the entrance to the room or vestibule.
In addition to the main door, they often hang a second one, like a mosquito sash for a summer residence, only instead of a polymer mesh they stretch a steel one with a small cell. A window is arranged in a similar way.
The floor in the chicken room can also be insulated with materials left over from the repair of the dacha. Do not use basalt or mineral wool for insulation, even if the roof or floor was insulated with this material in the country house. Chickens hear smells very well and react poorly to phenol vapors and resins based on them, and a relatively thin floor does not guarantee reliable protection. The easiest way is to lay a double layer of sheet foam and a film to protect against condensate, and under the subfloor, a vent must be arranged to remove moisture.
Properly done ventilation plays a special role in the life of chickens. The simplest is forced ventilation in the form of a small window in the back wall. An exhaust hole measuring 15×10 cm is cut out in the ceiling zone, and the air inflow is made in the form of an air valve on the front door.
The walls of the chicken coop are insulated in the same way as the cottage. In the simplest case, the boards of the inner wall cladding are upholstered on the outside with XPS sheets, tightened with foil and upholstered with wooden clapboard.
Chicken coop layout
Usually, the interior of the chicken coop is divided into two halves by the central passage, photo. Most of the chicken coop is allocated for the arrangement of a perch, nests and feeders for chickens are installed in the smaller half of the room.
The floor in the chicken coop is covered with a layer of sand and sawdust, which well protect the tree from bird droppings and at the same time protect it from condensation.
During severe frosts, chickens can leave the perch and huddle together. In this case, you can lay a layer of straw, or use rags available in the country to close the slots and the ventilation inlet valve to prevent freezing of the lower tiers of the chicken coop.
The walls and ceiling of the premises for keeping chickens must be treated with a layer of lime. Experts recommend treating joints and gaps between boards, wherever insects and parasites can accumulate. The outer walls of the chicken coop are painted with light acrylic paints or covered with weather-resistant varnish, photo.
Conclusion
The wooden room of the chicken coop always turns out to be light and warm. But in the cold, when it is impossible to do without heating, the tree becomes a source of increased risk in terms of fire safety. Therefore, the wooden walls of the building for chickens have to be regularly treated with flame retardants, and the heater installation sites must be sheathed with a metal sheet. In this case, the chicken room in the country will stand for a long time.
