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!!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Danni]

Ok quick update. The girls are not going anywhere near the vege patch atm, so hopefully we can train them to stay away from that area. I will always be out there with them when I let them roam.

I don't think we will name them as they are identical! Mason is in love -- its gorgeous!

[Danni]

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that the chicks havent found the vege garden still!

AND we got 2 eggs today!!! So thats 4 eggs in 3 days, I'm stoked!

[HotI]

I don't think we will name them as they are identical! Mason is in love -- its gorgeous!

We have named our chooks, but some of them 'share' names. Brook1, Brook2 and Brook3 are all brown chooks and the one chook probably doesn't get the same number each time but it gives us a name to call them by.