Category Archives: Housing

Chicken Swap Friends and Their Chicken Set-Up

I am enjoying the Chicken Swap site.  The information goes directly to my email address when something new is posted.  Some people might find that annoying with so many posts but I quickly delete anything that doesn’t appeal to me so no big deal.   I like to see what is for sale and what the prices are because I know I will be wanting some Maran chickens before too much longer.

Jimmy on Chicken Swap offered to show his set up to a Newbie in the chicken raising world and I asked if I could come, too.  I LOVE going to see what ideas I might pick up from others.

Jimmy’s family certainly showed “southern hospitality” by having tea and brownies for our visit.  So nice.  He has a very friendly family and I was especially impressed with his son’s knowledge and love of the chickens.

Jimmy’s set up was very impressive and I left with a bunch of ideas of future projects for our chicken yards and houses.  I hope we can duplicate his water system for his chickens because he doesn’t have to clean containers and boy would that save me some time.  Calvin and I will be doing some plumbing projects down the road.

He also have a storage building converted into a chicken house with some great ideas for the nests and perches that close up and lift up for easy cleaning underneath.   He has a run attached to it so his chickens get outside and have that much needed sunlight.  Plus, he had room for his chicken supplies in the storage building so everything was handy and so neat and clean.

Boy, my poor husband is going to have some heavy duty “honey-do lists” when he retires.  I just want to incorporate all Jimmy’s ideas into our future projects.

I was thinking about building more chicken houses with the 4×8 sheets of wood but I really like the way Jimmy and James, his son, made the back wall (of one chicken house) with vertical boards leaving a gap between each one of probably 1/2 inch for ventilation.  My chicken houses always seem hot during the summer and in my one yard, it is the only shade they have until my trees grow bigger.

And to top it all, James gave me a dozen guinea eggs.  I had guineas when I had a dairy farm in Missouri and I enjoyed seeing them running around and hearing the “buckwheat” sound the males (?) made.

I have said it before and I will say it again, chicken people are just nice and helpful people.

Snake in the chicken yard

Calvin always tells me to watch out for snakes when collecting the eggs.  He once found 2 four foot snakes in the chicken nests at his mom’s house.  So, today was my day to find a snake.

I was going into the Silkie yard to collect eggs.  Some of them like to lay on the ground even though I provide crates with hay.  There are two hens sitting on eggs in the house that is 8 feet long.   On each end, there is a hen sitting in her crate on four eggs preparing to be mammas.  Right beside the one crate is a sunk-in area where a hen has been laying eggs on previous days.  Fortunately, the whole front of the chicken house is wide open with lots of sun light so I immediately saw the snake curled up in that rounded, sunken hole.  I didn’t get too close to it but instead I ran to get a flat end shovel.

Calvin was due home within ten minutes but I couldn’t wait.  I lost a baby chick and an egg about ready to hatch and I wasn’t going to lose anymore future babies.

I stood about four feet away from the snake and shoved the shovel at it about in the center of the body just trying to hold it down.  Of course the dirt under it was soft and it made me have to push really hard just to hold it still.  I stood there for probably 10 minutes and I threw a brick on the back end of it.  There wasn’t really much I could do because I needed to just hold the shovel to prevent it from  slithering away.

I heard my neighbor, Gail, outside and I called to her. Her husband, Ray was home.  So he was over in a matter of minutes with another shovel with a sharper point.  He said it was a Corn Snake which is what I suspected and they aren’t poisonous.  He said he hated to kill it but I said it has to die.

When my husband came home, the snake was dead but it was still wiggling around.  Calvin hates snakes which is funny because when he was a kid, he played with them.   When we watch shows with snakes on them, he actually jumps when the snake strikes at someone.   This is the corn snake.  Had he been in my chicken nest in one of my closed-in chicken yards, I doubt if I would have noticed him until he bit me.  He looks like the straw that is in the nests.

I will definitely be taking a flash light from now on when I go into the darker chicken houses to collect eggs.

Bread ties come in handy

I started saving my bread ties a couple months ago.  I didn’t know exactly what I would do with them but they just looked like something I could re-use.

I was out in the chicken yard today moving chicks into another yard.   I needed to attach the smaller fence that is two feet tall (and has smaller holes) to the fence that goes around the chicken yard.  I had run out of the ties that I usually use which by the way, are a pain in the butt.  The name of them escapes me right now but it will come to me.  They are plastic and come in different colors and sizes.  You put one end thru the other and it catches if you have put it in on the right side…..which I do not do quite often.

Well, I thought of my bread ties and they worked perfectly.   I attached the one short soft fence to the outside fence quickly with a lot less cussing under my breath.

So now I am putting all my bread ties in an empty peanut butter jar with a lid and putting them in the shed with the tools and chicken supplies.  And best of all, they are free.

Building a simple 4×4 chicken house for $36

My husband and I recently built a small “dug-out” chicken house for three hens and a rooster and I thought I would share how we built it.  It is a quick and easy way to make some shelter for your chickens.

You will need two 4×8 sheets of plywood ( $12 each), six 2×4’s ($2 each),  screws, drill, saw, saw horses and something to make a hole for the perching poles.  My husband has this circular saw looking thing that attaches to his drill that is probably and inch and a half in diameter.

The two sheets of plywood need to be cut into, making  four 4×4 sheets.  Two of the pieces will be the sides and one for the roof and one for the back of the house.  You will need to put two of the boards together and make at least one hole to go thru both boards in exactly the same place to be able to put a perching rod up.  If you have smaller chickens like Silkies,  I would put the holes in the bottom at the back of the house about 2 feet off the ground, about half way up the board and only a foot from the back wall.

This picture shows the 4×4 with the holes cut thru both sheets.  To attach the 2x4s, we line the two  2x4s (approximately 48 inches) up on the left and right and then I sit on the board to keep it from moving while my husband adds the screws.  Then we add the other two 2×4 (approximately 40 inches) which are shorter to frame out the interior of the board.   Do this to both side pieces.

Then I painted the exterior of all four 4x4s.  If you want to make the house blend in with the surroundings, I would suggest a forest green or a brown.  I already had some antique white paint so that’s what I used.

We have moved the four panels of 4x4s into the chicken yard now.  Our fence was already up and it was going to be difficult to move the whole house so we did the majority of the work (cutting and attaching the 2x4s)  in the shade near our house.   As you can see, we put the back panel up to the side and then screwed the back panel on to the 2×4 on the side.  Then we added the other side panel and again attached the back panel to it also.  Definitely need two people for this part.This is how it looks with the sides and back together.  It stands alone.  Yay.  You will need to add a 2×4 at the top and bottom of the back board.

Match up the back corners first and attach screws along the back.  Then straighten the sides to line up with the roof and attach with screws. Then add a 2×4 along the top front so you will have something to screw the top to and you might want to add one on the bottom front.  I did not because I want to be able to rake the chicken poo and straw out easier.  Instead, I took the last 2×4 and attached it to the (inside)  middle of the top of the roof to keep it from warping.

We already had a pole for perching.  We added a crate with hay in it for the laying hens and a feeder and water.  The yard is just 8×10 foot, I would guess.  I also have some netting over the top which I purchases at Lowes for about 8 bucks.  We don’t have a lot of predators that are four-footed around her but the chicken hawks and owls will sweep down and take your small chickens.

If you need to close your chickens in at night, it is easy to close in the front with boards or fencing.  I will probably add a 2×4 foot piece of plywood at the front top to help keep the rain out.  You can also make your roof slanted to make the water run off.

My husband keeps saying he wants to build the houses at least 6 feet tall so we don’t have to bend down to get into the houses but when you are only reaching in a couple feet to retrieve the eggs, it doesn’t bother me.  You might want to get the crate off the ground and attach it to the back wall.  I don’t really see a lot of benefit in doing that though because I like everything moveable.  You don’t really have to have a nest for them because they will lay back in the corner of the house without a nest, unfortunately.

My husband and I are not carpenters by any means and there might be a lot better way to make a small house but this is really cheap and is almost instant protection from the weather.  You can also lean a piece of wood to the side of the house and lay a brick on the ground at the base of the wood to keep the board from moving.  This gives you a place to put the food and water and it is not in the house.  The corn gets wet and it smells really bad.  lol

I hope you can figure out my system to build the house.  It is my first attempt at trying to explain how to build something step-by-step.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy your chickens as much as I enjoy mine.

Hens fighting over chicks

It is very important to keep your sitting hen away from other chickens.   Unfortunately, I learned the hard way.

I miscalculated the hatch date on my white Silkie’s eggs and had another hen and her 4 month old chick in the same yard.   I usually go outside pretty much when it is daylight just to make sure everyone is still there and no one is in a distressed situation.    But, my husband had the day off and we slept-in and then ate breakfast.

When I checked on my sitting hen, she had hatched out three chicks and two of them were about 15 inches from her nest and were dead.  I suspect there was a fight over the chicks.  The same thing happened to my neighbor the very same day.  I was so upset to find the perfectly healthy chicks dead.

Sometimes you make decisions that end up biting you in the butt.  I only have four adult white Silkies so I was trying to keep them in a separate yard to ensure the eggs would be fertilized only by my white rooster.  When the one white Silkie hen became broody, I moved the rooster and the other two hens out into the large Silkie yard after I  moved the other roosters out.

But, the two white hens didn’t seem to adjust well after two days.  They were sleeping in the middle of the yard instead of going into the house with the other hens.  They were also being picked on by the other hens.  The whole pecking order thing, I guess.  So,  I gave in and put them back into the pen with the broody hen thinking there was still a few days before the chicks would hatch.  I was thinking “I will think about it tomorrow” like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

So…….be sure and separate your broody hen with her eggs from your other hens.  If they fight over the babies, there is a good chance the babies will get injured or die.   I knew Silkie hens would steal each others eggs and baby chicks because they are excellent mothers but I had no idea they would want them so badly that the chick would end up getting killed.  So sad.