Please help me re bulding a chicken coop and looking after chooks!

[Danni]

Hello lovely ladies!

We are trying to build some sort of house for some pretty fluffy little girls.

Any tips or advice on their house?

Also, what do you feed your lovely ladies?

[LimeSlice]

We used to get chook feed (little pellets) and give them the Kitchen scraps. Make sure you give them eggshells to!! It helps make sure their own eggshells are really hard, and the harder the shell the healthier the chook


Um...Chickens CAN fly - depsite popular belief! Not far, but high and far enough to make it over a 6ft fence. so I really recommend a covered run for them. Also they will dig eventually at fences whilst picking around...so not a bad idea to build the fence down into the ground 1/2 -1 foot too
This will also make it harder for foxes to get in, or your family dog or cat

Oh and make sure you have enough laying boxes - nothing worse than going to collect your eggs and having to ransack the place looking for them, if you dont stand on them first! lol
Good luck!!

[Rivlas]

What ever you do make sure there is a bottom on your pen if it's movable or there is netting around the base, dug in, to stop foxes getting in. In other words make sure its fox/cat proof.
You can feed them kitchen scraps and pellets. Make sure there is an area for them to shelter from sun/rain and straw in the boxes helps, so when you clean it out you put the straw in the compost bin.
Plenty of water especially in summer as my Mums like to get wet to cool off.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

[Phteven]

You can cut the feathers on one wing to hamper their flying. If only one wing is trimmed they can't balance so they can't fly high or far or accurately.

[Floweryfields]

You can cut the feathers on one wing to hamper their flying. If only one wing is trimmed they can't balance so they can't fly high or far or accurately.

Yep try that, but I have one girl who gets over the fence anyway!


I would definitely say ensure solid foundations, I had a fox take my 4 chooks from a chicken tractor once - built a house with a cement floor after that.
I feed mine a course grain mix which has cracked grains and pellets mixed in together. And lots of scraps and time to scratch in the yard for bugs and stuff. Nothing like home grown eggs.

[Danni]

Thanks guys!!

Tomorrow I am off to a poultry auction to see what I can snap up. We are looking at getting 2 or 3 to start with. Our make shift pen is soooooooo ugly and slapped together. We have no dogs, cats or foxes in the area though.

I'm gunna see how it goes, and how much I fall in love with the chooks. I may even splurge and buy one of those fancy schmancy chicken coops off ebay. How deluxe!

[Phteven]

Don't be too sure about not having foxes. They live in most suburb and and urban areas in Australia. We had a fox raid in our last place which is in the middle of the 'burbs.

[Danni]

How would they get in? From neighbours places under the fences?

[Rivlas]

Yes, we have foxes here in the city, ask my JR in the middle of the night. About 5 min from here they are seen often by my DH on his way to/from work.
Not often here but it is worse when we take her to Gippsland, they are everywhere.

[Phteven]

How would they get in? From neighbours places under the fences?

Foxes love urban areas - they are happy to look through garbage bins. The place I have seen the most foxes is Central London lol. The fox that ate our chooks came under a fence via our neighbour's yard. We were on holidays and the guy who was feeding them hadn't put them in the coop for the night. If the hens have a safe place for the night they should be ok. Foxes aren't brazen enough for daylight attacks they usually sneak in overnight.

ETA - if you're going to a poultry auction try to buy young chooks because older hens lay less eggs.

[Kazbah]

Or, if you're starting with chooks, do what we do and go to a battery hen place- the chooks are very very cheap, just over a year old and would be killed because they can no longer lay 3 eggs/day. We've got most of our chooks from that place and they are the most lovely creatures, learning how to walk, roost, peck and scratch at the ground ... they now greet us at the gate and follow us around the yard ...

Better homes & garden magazine has some great coops for DIY, or try Organic Gardening Magazine as well.

[Floweryfields]

Or, if you're starting with chooks, do what we do and go to a battery hen place- the chooks are very very cheap, just over a year old and would be killed because they can no longer lay 3 eggs/day. We've got most of our chooks from that place and they are the most lovely creatures, learning how to walk, roost, peck and scratch at the ground ... they now greet us at the gate and follow us around the yard ...

Better homes & garden magazine has some great coops for DIY, or try Organic Gardening Magazine as well.

Be prepard to be saddened by how little those poor chooks know about being chooks if you get them from there though!

Re foxes - Just on night fall and sunrise are also very risky fox times.

[Phteven]

We bought our current chooks as point of lay pullets from a shop that sourced them from a battery place. It was kind of depressing that they had no idea how to be chooks but also really uplifting watching them discover that they were hens.

[Danni]

no time to post...but we got 3 Langshan hens! Omg they are so gorgeous. Black with metallic green feathers.

We took them home in a big box and was greeted with a big brown egg on arrival. How sweet! They are pecking around at the grass and DH is finishing the make shift pen. I am in love so much that I am happy to go and buy a proper coop!

[LimeSlice]

yay! How cool! Glad they are enjoying their new home

Have you named them yet?

[HotI]

We inherited one chook and a dilapidated old chook house when we bought our house.

We added a few chooks, and then decided to upgrade the chook house and now have 12 healthy, happy, funny chooks.

We built the chook house (has been referred to as the Taj Mahal of chook houses), using recycled timber and corrugated iron, an old bathroom door and splashed out and bought new boards for the floor. It has a big people door at the front, and a chook door at the back with cables to open. It has 3 nesting boxes in the front that open up from outside to collect the eggs.

You will need a perch for them to sleep on. Just find a suitable large stick or you can buy a lump of wood and round the corners.

Our old nesting boxes were crates with straw in them.

We feed a complete poultry mix, that has different seeds in it, and they get all our vegie scraps, bread etc. They all free range for most of the day at the moment. We are planning to put a run in, but have to get enough cash for some tall wire because we have some flying girls and clipping didn't really help.

They will mess up your garden abit, so you might need to contain them. If ours get in the front yard, they like to scratch in the mulch and spread it on to the lawn.

Chooks are great. Ours will let us know if they have run out of food, and run up to us when we go in the yard.

A shell pool in the yard can be good, so you know they always have access to water.

[Kazbah]

Ooooh that's a really good point - Mabello, make sure you fence off your veggie patch really well. And when you've done with your harvest, let the chooks in to scratch around, they'll dig up the ground really well and manure it

[HotI]

Couple more things i thought of.

When you get new chooks, to teach them where 'home' is it is a good idea to keep them locked up for about a week before letting them free range. They will then return here each night and should lay in the boxes and not in the yard.

For the first few days put them on the perch each night. They will learn to sleep on the perch. If they sleep in the nesting boxes, they will also poo in them and then you have to clean the eggs.

We just got 3 new chooks, and so they are all locked in the house for a few days.

If you want to give them something to 'play' with, sew through a lettuce or cabbage with string and then tie it to the roof (or something high). the lettuce moves as they try to eat it and it keeps them interested.