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If you ever thought about raising chickens or even building your own chicken coup for that matter, maybe it is time you actually did something about it. When you compare the price difference of building your own hen houses versus buying, you will be amazed at the amount of money you can save constructing them yourself. And it will not take as long or be as hard as you may have ever imagined. It is possible to get it done in a weekend or two.

Before cutting your first 2-by-4 or nailing two boards together, it is a good idea to come up with a plan. Chickens need a clean dry nesting area along with some room to roam. They will forage for a portion of their own food if you will let them, and this will keep your chickens happy and your feed expenses down. When you are making design decisions, you should be thinking about ways to accommodate the needs of your flock. In this case, you want the chicken coup to have an indoor area where their nests can remain clean and dry. You also want an outdoor area where they can free range for a portion of the food.

Both of these areas will be attached to form a single chicken coup. There will be a “house” section and a backyard area. Each section will be framed with 2×2s or 2×4s. The inside area will be constructed as an “A” frame building and the backyard will have 2×2s or 2×4s forming a large box without walls or a ceiling. The only other decision that needs to be made at this point is in regard to its location. The areas where the hen houses are placed must drain well. If the drainage is poor, it could end up being a health problem for the birds.

The main materials needed are lumbar, mostly 2-by-4s, chicken wire, nails and staples. The 2-by-4s will make the frame where the siding or plywood can be nailed. They will also be used to frame the outside area where the chicken wire will be attached with staples. It is important to buy chicken wire that has no larger than 2-inch spaces. If the openings are too large, predators and wild birds can squeeze through and come in contact with the chickens, either harming them or spreading disease. You also want to treat the wood and wire so that they will not rot or rust over time. Rotting wood can also attract insect infestations.

The outside part of these poultry houses will have an earthen floor. In other words, you will not make a floor from the wood or the wire. This will allow the birds to free range in that area. You will also need to make a hinged opening that will allow you to get completely inside of the poultry housing. This way you will be able to collect the eggs easily, remove any chickens when necessary, and clean out the droppings.

Another thing you may want to consider is whether you want to make your hen houses stationary, in other words in a permanent location, or if you want the added benefit of making them portable. You can make your poultry housing using the same basic steps whether they are permanent or movable, you just cannot make a portable chicken coup so heavy that you cannot move it when necessary.

Portable hen houses have a distinct advantage over stationary structures. Chickens can pretty much destroy a small area of ground from scratching and pecking for food. Having a permanent chicken hutch means that once they have ruined their outdoor area, it will stay ruined. With a portable hutch, on the other hand, once your flock has eaten most of the grasses in one area, you can simply move it to another area that has lots of fresh succulent plants. This gives the original area time to recuperate. By the time you move your portable chicken coup back to the original area it can be like new again.

Larry Sigurdsson has raised many breeds of chicken for both meat and eggs. He also maintains a fun and educational web site at hen-houses.org where you can receive free information about building hen houses.

Keeping your own stock of free range egg laying hens is an enjoyable and rewarding pastime as more and more city folk are discovering with the increasing popularity of ‘urban farming’. Hens can be kept in even the smallest of spaces as long as they have suitable shelter, a ready supply of food and small patch of ground to scratch around in.
Hens can easily be bought as chicks from local farmers and smallholders. They will produce one egg per day per hen so even a couple of good layers will produce more than enough eggs for a family. They are easy to keep and feed and as long as you don’t add a cockerel to the flock you wont get any complaints from the neighbors either! In no time at all the hens will become very tame and make entertaining pets as well as being a useful source of fresh eggs.

Hens should be given a roosting shelter in the form of a well constructed chicken coop. This will need to keep them warm and dry and protect them from predators at night and also provide some roosting boxes in which to lay their eggs. When constructing the chicken coop, make sure that it is easy for you to gain access to for cleaning and collecting the eggs. The coop can be attached to or placed inside a small pen in an unused corner of the garden. Give your hens as much space as you can spare them. The more space, the happier and healthier your hens will be.
Your new hens should be fed with proprietary ‘layers pellets’. These will ensure that they get all the nutrients they need to thrive and produce a regular supply of quality eggs. You can also supplement their diet with food waste from the kitchen but remember that what your feeding your hens is ultimately what you are feeding yourself as you will be eating the eggs!
Make sure also that they have a supply of fresh water available at all times.On a warm day a hen can dehydrate very quickly and this can often prove fatal. Make sure that the container you provide the water in can’t be easily knocked over as they often perch on the side of the vessel to take a drink. A good idea is to purchase a specially designed water hopper as these cant easily be knocked over or otherwise emptied inadvertently.
Ninety nine percent of the time you will have no problems keeping chickens but there are some practical matters you will need to keep in mind.
For example if you are occasionally going to give your hens the run of the garden you need to make sure there are no hidden hazards such as holes in fences, gaps under gates or deep ponds which could cause a problem. Bear in mind also that the family dog or cat (or the neighbors for that matter) may have an entirely different agenda!
Make regular checks on the condition of the pen and coop for signs of predators such as foxes. It doesn’t take much more than a space the size of a hand for a fox to squeeze through and remember he has all night to do it. There is nothing more disheartening than seeing a mass of feathers and little else remaining when you go to collect your eggs in the morning.
If you decide to complement your ‘urban farmyard’ by growing your own organic vegetables then it might be best to keep your hens away from the vegetable patch as chickens like nothing more than a fresh leaf of lettuce straight from the plant.
Remember also that if you plan to spend some time on holiday you will need someone to take care of them.

Overall, keeping your own chickens is a fun and rewarding pastime with the added bonus of having a constant supply of free range eggs! It’s easy and fun to get started and a great project to get the kids involved in.

The author has been succesfully keeping farm and exotic fowl for almost twenty years and is also an enthusiastic keeper and breeder of aviary finches. For more information on keeping chickens and building your own chicken coop just follow these links http://tinyurl.com/raisingchickens and http://tinyurl.com/buildachickencoop. Related reading on growing your own organic food can be found here http://tinyurl.com/growingorganicfood

Food is, as we have been saying for some time, the central battle for freedom and survival.  “Change”, which sounds great, has, in fact, become the mantra of those who seek corporate triumph over independent producers – and it’s happening around food. The mechanism is simple: a set of bills ostensibly devoted to “food safety” and “food security” — and a plan to put Big Agribiz supporters in charge.

In charge of what? Your food and mine – it’s supply, farming, production, food quality, irradiation, Codex on your dinner table, unlabeled GMOs and other profitable, but lethal, corporate-friendly food strategies.  Through appointments and legislation, the change is coming fast and furious which could even make our own family farms and gardens the site of criminal activity if we attempt to grow our own food or produce and sell it.

So sure are they of victory that the President of change is about to appoint Michael Taylor, a lawyer for, and former executive at Monsanto, to head the empowered “food (sic)k safety (sic)k” agency.

Today’s eAction Item is quite simple: TELL THE PRESIDENT “NO” TO TAYLOR!

Time is short and the issue is of immense importance.

Urgent 3-Part Action Item:

Step 1: Click here to email the President NOW:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26941

Step 2: Call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 and the comment center 202-456-1111. Let’s keep those phones ringing!

Step 3: Click here to tell Congress “NO!” to all of the fake food “safety” bills. They provide neither real, wholesome food nor safety:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714

Politicians often come up with bad ideas. These are not just bad ideas: they are a catastrophically bad ideas for BOTH health and freedom. In fact, we are facing nothing short of food tyranny that will kill not only organic farming, but lots of people as well, along with the entire private farming sector. Your own gardens are at risk.

The President’s appointment of someone so closely associated with industrialized “food” is “change” in exactly the wrong direction.

Let’s demand real change: that Congress and the President change directions!

BTW, Read the really frightening article in this month’s Mother Earth News, The Hidden Link Between Factory Farms and Human Illness We all KNOW this. We all sense this. It is time we did more. Stop EATING this.

There are many alternatives, many reviewed in the above article. Eat less meat, buy from reputable growers that employ sustainable and HUMANE practices, Raise your own sustainably or pay someone to, but do NOT support FACTORY FARMING

My dream is to have a large kitchen someday. But for now, my New Years resolution is to learn to function effectively in the space that I have. I seem to have always had small kitchens and mostly small gardens to provide for the small kitchen. I have never mastered the large, grow all your own food, store it, stock it up for winter kitchen OR garden. I once ‘put back’ 39 quarts of green beans only to find they were bad when I took the first one out to cook on a cold day in November some fifteen years back.

I’ve always admired the clever kitchen plans in the magazine rack grazing I’ve done. I’ve incorporated many an idea from these prints for my own kitchens through the years. But I’d never thought until recently that I was not the only one, that my small spaces were not the only ones being struggled with. The photos I’d found in these many magazines often made me feel like a squid for “never thinking of that”. I always felt totally incompetent as I looked at the photos and envisioned my own kitchen in my mind, always lacking in the most
efficient use of space.

Then, there’s the garden spaces of the same home with said kitchen. The little bitty space of land that feeds twenty. How do they DO that? They are always perfect, always without a weed. Perfectly manicured and blooming at all the right intervals. This garden always has the right mix of shade and sunlight at the right time of the day.

And while I have always loved most every home I’ve lived in simply because I lived in it and it was my home, I can’t honestly think of many times I have been truly comfortable entertaining many at one time or completely proud of the work I’ve done on the garden arrangement. I’ve yearned for the comfort that a large kitchen brings. I now have the yard and the garden space, but I am truly stuck with the itty bitty kitchen.

It may sound like a lot, but 63 square feet of space housing a stove, refridgerator, and sink fills up quickly. I have no dishwasher, no garbage disposal, and only 2.5 feet of counter space. Much hangs on the wall or in a small sofa table that has taken up residence where a long counter top should be if it wouldn’t block the door. I have found
that many people are actually struggling with such limited space in kitchen and garden.

It was pleasant (and humbling) to see that food personalities like
Mark Bittman
are quite at home in confining, NYCity apartment sized kitchens.  The NYTimes has a “Now Screening”
video series entitled “Tiny Kitchen If professional cooks and professed minimalists accomplish so much with so little, so should I. So aside from the tiny
kitchen, which I will forthwith stop complaining about, the average garden space should be a true delight!

I applaud you if you garden in itty bitty city/ balcony gardens. You know who you are! This amount of area need never be unproductive. Even in part shade container gardens can accomodate colder season goodies like spinach and romain lettuce. Using larger patio containers you can grow lively and productive tomato plants and (forgive the pun) but if you like patio tomatoes, they excell in this method of growing.

So the next time you want to gripe and complain about space, just remember, many do a lot of very little and you can too!