How to build a coop with your own hands

Many consider the breeding of chickens as a business idea in the countryside. The benefits are double: both diet meat is there, and an egg. If you decide to apply in practice your calculations of the profitability of this type of activity, or you want to have a dozen fresh eggs on hand, and for the holiday - a baked chicken, then you need to either adapt the shed available in the village (at the dacha), or build a house for the bird with your own hands.

Volume of investmentsand labor costs depends on many factors: specific materials taken for construction, the size of the building itself (depends on the number of livestock), etc. We will make a reservation at once: in this article, we will not talk about breeds of chickens, their diet and ways of breeding. The article proposes to acquaint the reader with how to build a mini-fowl by himself.

Mini-chicken coop for 3 to 5 hens, scheme

Strictly speaking, if you decided to acquire such a modest amount of poultry, there can be no talk about the business project. It is unlikely that you will satisfy your own needs for such product asegg. However, everything starts small. Try your strength as a beginner poultry farmer and with such feathered farming.

For the maintenance of 3 -5 chickensa specially constructed winter room is not necessary. You can use the free space in the shed, making a simple mobile structure. So, to build a small chicken coop for so many chickens we will needthe following materials:

1. welded wire meshfine-meshed;
2. polycarbonate;
3. plywood;
4. flatslate;
5. metalprofile pipe15x15 mm.

For the construction of such chicken coops, we can confine ourselves to the total volume of space in, cubic meters. For convenience, we choose the followingcell sizes:length m., width m., height m.

Step one:We weld the framecells according to the indicated dimensions in the drawing of a metal profile pipe 15x15 mm (Fig. 1).

Step two:If you put the cage closer to the window, then the back and side walls of the cage are made from plywood. In front we make a wall made of fine-meshed welded wire mesh.The bottom is a two-level. First to the frame at a distance of 20 cm. from the bottom point of the construction we attach the welded mesh under a slight slope so that the eggs can roll down into the egg-box, and then on the bottom of the frame we attach a pan from plywood or flat slate. Can be adapted as a material on a pallet and polycarbonate. In the process of vital activity, the litter from the chickens freely falls through the mesh bottom to the pallet. Once or twice a month, the pallet is cleaned. As a pallet, it is better to use flat slate, because plywood with time flakes due to moisture on it.

Side wallscells also make from a mesh net, if there is no plywood at hand or the lighting of the room is insufficient. The front side of this mini-fence is also made of a grid. We can fix it to the metal structure rigidly, can be made in the form of an opening door.

Step Three:Attach the egg collector with usual clamps to the grid, which is on the floor and install the feeder on the front or side of the cage. The egg carton is not hard to fix. During the cleaning of the cage (cleaning the pallet), it rises slightly. Then it will be more convenient to clean the pallet. Inside the cage we put a drinker. The egg carton is made from the same material as the bottom - a fine-meshed welded wire.We make the troughfrom plywood or polycarbonate, the scheme of which is presented below (Fig. 2).

It remains only to install a portable cage in the selected place. Mini-chicken coop is ready!

Mini-henhouse cell contents for 10-20 chickens, scheme

If you want to increase the number of birds to 20 pieces, then you will need 3 to 4 such cells. Use the same material as in the first case. The cells themselves can be placed in different ways:

1. Cells are stacked on top of each otherin 2 rows(Fig. 3).

1. Cells are stacked on top of each otherin 1 row(Fig. 4).

Depending on the availability of free space in the barn, other factors choose the suitable option for yourself.

However, if you originally build a mini-chicken coop, which is designed fora herd of 10-20 hens, you can simply make two designs of large cells. And the size itself will depend on the number of livestock, on what kind of breed you are going to have, other factors. Approximately the specified number of birds make a chicken coop with a volume of up to 2 cubic meters.

Chicken coop with a cell content of 50-100 chickens, scheme

If you decide to get such a quantity of a bird, then you are clearly aiming at selling the surplus product (and you, of course, will have it) in order to make a profit. If in your region cold enough winters, without a warm chicken coop in this case can not do. It can be built quite quickly using various construction materials and roofing material: brick, rubble stone, adobe, slate, metal profile, etc. If funds permit, more expensive material is used. For the number of birds up to 100 individuals, a hen house is constructed with a size of 30 square meters.

Building a winter mini-chicken coop

1. Diggingfoundation.
2. Fill it withconcrete.
3. DoingscreedOn the floor.
4. We drive outsocle.
5. We drive outwalls, we insert doors and windows.
6. Doingthe roof.

With the features of the construction of home gardens in detail can be found on various sites on the Internet.

Cells inside the coopset up shelves to the ceiling for rational use of space (Fig. 5).

The passage is left in the middle of the room is not very narrow, because this will be your workspace.

Internal dimensions of the roomup to a hundred livestock can be 4 x, m. or, x 7 m (Fig. 6).

Cell Constructionsare different. You can choose the option indicated above, placing the cells for the bird by the longline method.

You can complicate the task for yourself, but to make your chickens a more comfortable house. To do this, place 1 -2 perches in the cells and make additional sections for the nests. In this case, it is not necessary to attach the egg-box to the cage - the eggs are removed from the nests manually.

If you buildchicken coop, and decided to take care of comfortable nests, you will need to make wooden boxes. For this purpose, plywood is also suitable. They can be filled with sawdust, but it is better if it is finely chopped straw. They are located in the back of the mini-house (cages). If the height of the cage is small (up to 70 cm), the nest should be placed about 20 cm above the floor. If the height of the cage suggests a higher design, the nests are raised higher.

If the cells are positioned as shown in Figure 5.,you can make a totalfor each tier of one row of PVC pipe.

Winter mini-chicken coop with a walk, drawing

There are no fundamental differences in the construction of this type of chicken coop. However, it has a number of significant differences inside the premises, the plan of which is given below. If in the above proposed variant the content of chickens in the cells was suggested, thenwinter poultry house with a walkthey practically do not have.Constructive featureThe internal arrangement is such that the whole room is divided into two parts: the paddock and the nesting part (Fig. 7).

This version of the mini-chicken coop for birds is preferable:it feels much more comfortable. However, you lose in the useful area of ​​the room, because if the cell content (intensive) by 30 square meters can freely contain more than 100 units of livestock, then the second option - no more than 50 units.

Summer aviary henhouse, drawing

Forincrease of egg productionit is possible to make a mini-open-air cage in the summer.

Principal differencesfrom the mini-chicken coop, located in the barn:

1. there is space for freepoultry;
2. designed forspring-summer-autumn period.

Design features of the enclosure

The size of the enclosure varies depending on the number of birds. Without failin the enclosure there are 2 parts:section for the paddock and a section in which chickens feed and are carried. Section for walking, as a rule, is 2 times larger than the area of ​​the most covered poultry house (Fig. 8).

You can make two types of chicken coops:

1 - stationary;

2 - mobile.

We build the aviary

Step 1:We weld the structurefrom the profile pipe 50 - 70 mm. Instead of a profile metal pipe, you can use a wooden beam.

Step 2: Tighten part of the metalworkmesh-netting or galvanized welded wire meshwith a cell up to 50 mm. We do this in the poultry section. From above we pull the protective pritenyuschuyu grid. It is preferable to enter the paddock from the opposite side from the covered part of the coop.

Step 3: From plywood or chipboard slabswe are building the second part of the coop, in which the bird will be fed and carried. In the same part, we makeroosts and sections for nests. Instead of the roosts, you can use a constructed ladder or ladder, the structure of this chicken coop is presented below. This is true for older chickens (over one and a half years old) (Fig. 9).

Feedersdo from the back of the covered section in such a way that they open outward to fill the feed in them and can be closed flush. To the bottom of such a box-trough narrowed so that in the end there was a slit for spilling the food into a fixed part of a separately knocked on the inside of the feed pan.The Drinkermake of the PFH sewage pipe with holes, so that the bird can drink from it. You do not need to fix it rigidly. If necessary, one edge of the pipe that goes out can be lowered to the ground to drain water. This section can be made in the form of a box, which has walls on all sides, even on the side of the walk.

Without fail this part of the coop should have a roof. This section can be covered with a metal profile sheet or ordinary slate. It is desirable to decideissue of noise insulation, because if you use a metal profile sheet as the roof, during the rain the sound inside this section will be very strong, which in turn will frighten the bird carrying the eggs. It is possible to make a roof also from polycarbonate, however such variant has a number of lacks, namely, polycarbonate under direct sunlight quickly decomposes, and most likely in two or three years the roof you need to change. In addition, the bird rushes better in a secluded semi-dark place.Polycarbonatehas a transparent structure, will let too much light into the nesting part of the coop.

If the number of chickens you do not exceed 20 goals, you can make a summermini-chicken coops of the following sizes:

Total area:up to 15 square meters, includingaviary-paddock10 square meters,chicken house- 5 square meters.

With the increase in the number of birdsthe size of the coopincrease, the correct size can be seen in the table below:

We hope that this article has helped you decide on the choicetype of mini-chicken coopand prompted some nuances and made bird care easy and effective. The rest will come with experience.