Keeping chickens in suburban areas is becoming an increasingly popular topic. Only 10 hens are enough to provide a small family with eggs throughout the year. Of course, for such productivity, you will have to create good conditions for the birds. This is especially important in the cold season. In a winter chicken coop, which is completely easy to build on your own, laying hens will be comfortable and warm.
Design
While it is warm outside, chickens can live in almost any room, as long as it is dry. However, with the onset of cold weather, many owners are thinking about building a comfortable home for laying hens. This point is very important so that the egg production of chickens does not drop sharply, and they remain safe. When designing a winter barn for 10 chickens, it is worth considering a number of important parameters.
- One of them is to maintain the temperature at the optimum value. In the cold period, it is desirable that the temperature in the room for chickens is not lower than + 12– + 14 degrees. To do this, there should be no drafts, and it is also necessary to take care of the insulation of the walls and floor. Ideal if you can carry out heating to constantly maintain the temperature at the same level. If this parameter is taken into account, then laying hens will constantly delight with fresh eggs.
- Another important parameter is humidity. If it is elevated in the chicken coop, then the health of the chickens may be at risk. Keeping the humidity at the optimum value is quite easy if there is ventilation in the room. Moreover, it can be made natural or forced.
- The egg production of chickens directly depends on daylight: the more daylight hours, the more eggs there will be. Daylight can enter the chicken coop through windows. However, it is better to do more with lamps that emit warm yellow light. If desired, you can even automate the process of turning on and off at a certain time by setting relays and timers.
- A winter chicken coop must be safe for birds. Otherwise, rodents or predators can enter it and harm the bird. The dimensions of the chicken coop are selected depending on the breed, the number of chickens and the amount of materials. It is worth paying attention that laying hens of different breeds can differ not only in size, but also in conditions of detention (temperature, lighting, and so on). Therefore, before choosing the drawings of the chicken coop, you should familiarize yourself with the selected breed of chickens as best as possible.
- At the design stage, it is important to consider that the doors open into the room. It is also desirable to make the floor with a slight slope towards the entrance. This trick will save you time cleaning up.
You should plan how the room will look inside, because for chickens you still need to organize feeders, drinkers, perches, ventilation, lighting, heating.
You should not take ready-made schemes with extreme accuracy. It is better if the project is drawn up independently, taking into account the features that are available on the site. Of course, it is better for novice builders to use ready-made drawings, which will avoid many mistakes. A chicken coop for 10 chickens should occupy 2×2 meters. This value is taken from the calculation that approximately 3 square meter of area is needed for 1 birds. If there are more than 10 hens or it is planned to expand the number in the future, then it is better to build a larger room in advance.
If the house will be used throughout the year, then you should not make it too big. In summer, chickens spend more time walking, and in winter they gather in groups. Therefore, we can proceed from the calculation of 4 birds per 1 square meter of the barn. Thus, for a dozen chickens, 2,5 square meters will be enough. m.
When making a chicken coop, you need to consider that you still need a place for walking. The area of the enclosure should correspond to the size of the room. For example, if the width of the bird house is 2 meters, then the dimensions of the walking yard should be 2×6 meters.
Site Selection
An important point in designing a room for chickens is the choice of the place where it will be located. It is best if the chicken coop can be installed in a quiet and peaceful corner, which is removed from unnecessary noise. When choosing a place for a chicken coop, it is necessary to take into account its location relative to the house, because it is better to settle the birds so that their smell does not reach the living rooms. Chickens are quite often frightened and do not like it when strangers invade their walking space. Therefore, it is better to protect them from unnecessary stress so that egg production does not decrease. For a chicken coop, the far corners on the site are great, where even the owners themselves rarely look.
The exit from the barn should lead to the walking yard. It is very good if you can make a poultry house and an aviary in the form of a single separate territory. The lowlands are not suitable for the construction of a winter poultry house, because when it gets warmer, the snow will begin to melt and penetrate into the premises. In addition, water can spread bird droppings throughout the site. Ideally, if you manage to position the chicken coop so that its windows are located on the south side, which will provide a large amount of sunlight inside. A south-facing aviary will also come in handy. In it, the birds will always be warm and get enough vitamin D.
It is desirable that the area on which the chicken room will stand has a slight slope, which will allow water not to stagnate in the walking yard during heavy rainfall. It is advisable to leave a distance of about four meters between the fence and the poultry house. This arrangement will avoid conflicts with neighbors and at the same time protect the room from gusts of wind. From the well or well, the house should be placed at a distance of 40 meters. After the place for the chicken coop is chosen, it is necessary to carry out work to prepare the site on which the construction will be carried out.
The size of the construction site is selected based on the size of the poultry house. The area under the chicken coop must be made as flat as possible. To do this, you can remove about 30 centimeters of land. In addition, this will prevent grass from growing under the structure. After that, a mound of gravel about 10-15 centimeters thick is made.
Materials and Tools
Before you start building a chicken coop, you should take care of the necessary materials and tools. Of course, when choosing what to build from, you should take into account the type of house, its size and other features. Most often, boards, timber, OSB (oriented strand board), chipboard (wood chipboard), fiberboard (wood-vinyl board), plywood are chosen for construction. The main advantage of these materials is that they keep heat very well.
Another plus is their ease of use. Yes, and the price of such materials is also pleasing. You can also use cheap, environmentally friendly and interesting material – reeds, but it does not grow in affordable quantities in every locality.
Important! It is categorically impossible to use iron in sheets to build a bird house. It freezes heavily, and condensation also settles on its walls. The result is a cold, damp and completely unsuitable chicken coop for birds. Materials with a strong specific smell are also not suitable for bird houses.
Bricks, cinder blocks, reinforced concrete blocks are also used for the construction of poultry houses. However, the cost of such materials is much higher. In addition, they require special skills and abilities. The chicken coop of them will turn out to be cold in itself, so it will have to be well insulated. Inside, such a room is best sheathed with something wooden.
Slate, roofing material, polycarbonate are suitable for the roof. If the chicken coop is only winter, then you can choose a metal profile as a roofing material. For summer versions of buildings, it is not suitable, because it gets very hot. You can insulate the barn with foam, mineral wool or any other material with good thermal insulation properties. The main thing when warming is not to leave gaps between the main materials.
It is also important to pay attention to the finish so that the chickens cannot get to the insulation. The floors are insulated with expanded clay.
Windows can be delivered completely finished or you can take frames and glass separately. For the foundation, you can choose metal piles, poles or cement with reinforcement. The walking yard is most often made of a chain-link mesh, and a reinforcing or plastic mesh is also suitable for an aviary. Cement, sand, gravel, boards, awnings for windows and doors, a ventilation pipe, self-tapping screws, nails, and screws should be purchased in advance.
For electricity in the house, you will need light bulbs, an electrical cable, wiring, a switch, a relay. Of the tools, you may need a shovel, a hammer, a screwdriver, a construction stapler and others.
Building
Building a winter chicken coop with your own hands begins with the foundation. There are several best options.
- Pile is the cheapest and easiest in terms of implementation. The weight of screw piles is small, so one person can handle their installation. The helical blades in the form of empty metal pipes are 2,5 meters long and are easy to screw into any soil, and the installation of such a foundation will not take more than an hour. On the site, you need to make markings corresponding to the size of the future chicken coop. It is best to do this with a rope with pegs. Next, you need to outline the places where the piles will stand. First you should screw in those that will be in the corners of the room, and then all the rest. It is worth installing piles at a distance of one and a half or two meters.
- Columnar is also good for cost-effectiveness and ease of installation. It can be done without special knowledge or experience. The installation begins with marking with a rope with pegs, then around the perimeter you need to dig holes 50×50 cm wide and 60–70 cm deep. The recesses should be located at a distance of about a meter, the holes are filled with a mixture of sand and gravel by about 10 cm, then they are well compacted. A brick is laid on top of the pillow and all this is poured with concrete mortar. It is necessary to fill in until the level is reached along the stretched rope. When the bases are ready, you can install pedestals or poles on them. It is imperative that they are 25 or more centimeters above the level. After that, you can fill the site with gravel.
- Tape is difficult to perform, but its reliability is undeniable. To make it, you first need to dig around the perimeter of the house. Then formwork is made, preferably from boards, and poured with concrete. In this case, it is important to adhere to the technology, the intricacies of which can be found out from specialists.
Of course, a chicken coop with a strip foundation is built a little longer, since the concrete will have to harden before the main construction work. For example, the construction of a wooden building can be started only 21 days after pouring, and from a brick – after 28-35 days. The first two foundation options are good because they can create additional ventilation. With them in the winter, there will be no problems with rotting floors. In addition, during the flood period in spring, the chicken coop will not be flooded.
When the foundation is ready, you can build a winter chicken coop further according to the selected drawing. The erection itself begins with the installation of the floor. First you need to build the so-called support frame, which is sheathed with boards from the bottom. Then lags are made at a distance of 50 centimeters. It is desirable that their cross section be 100×150 centimeters.
The base of the floor must be attached to the foundation pillars. But before that, it is desirable to put roofing material on the base. Even one layer of this material can increase reliability. When all this is done, you can sew up the floor with boards. To protect the flooring from decay, you can impregnate it with special solutions.
Next, move on to building walls. If they are from a bar, then between them it is necessary to lay a jute fiber, which is necessary to eliminate the gaps. For OSB walls, you first need to make a frame of beams arranged in a grid. The walls must be sheathed on both sides so that it is possible to fill them with insulation.
Windows and doors must be made during the construction of the walls. When installing, it is important to check their reliability, the absence of gaps. An important point is ventilation, which is easily organized using the simplest pipe.
The penultimate touch is the roof, which can be single or gable. It is necessary to take care of its waterproofing, for which roofing material is suitable. The last moment is the creation of artificial light and the interior arrangement of the barn. It is important that chickens and moisture cannot reach the wires. It is best to put them in special plastic boxes.
On the floor you need to lay a litter with a height of 7 centimeters. For perches, a beam with a diameter of about 6 centimeters is perfect. Perches with a total length of 10 meters are enough for 1,7 chickens. Nests measuring 50×50 cm can be made from any material, such as wood, old tires. The main thing is that there should be at least two of them. Drinking bowls and feeders can be selected wall or floor. The main thing is that the chickens should be comfortable using them. The last thing you need to do with your own hands is to build an aviary.
Warming and heating
When a chicken coop is made for the winter period, it is better to think over its insulation even before construction. For example, when installing a floor, expanded clay can be poured into its cells. And also the floors will become warmer if a thick layer of sawdust or straw is poured on them. For walls, good thermal insulation is important, which is suitable for mineral wool, polystyrene foam or ecowool. It should be borne in mind that any insulation must be sheathed with boards, fiberboard, chipboard or plastic.
If you want the chicken coop to be warm for sure, then it is better to build it all the same from logs or timber. To make the roof warmer, you can use chipboard panels for sheathing on the inside. In some regions where winters are colder, winterizing the bird shed alone is not enough. So you have to do more and heating.
The easiest way to heat a poultry house for 10 chickens is incandescent lamps.
Good Examples
Any object, including even the simplest poultry house, begins to be realized from a drawing. Without it, it will not be possible to correctly calculate the materials, to see what kind of structure the structure will have in the end. It is important that it be detailed with the obligatory designation of various details. Ideal if there is a drawing of the outer and inner space of the house. You can take one of the many ready-made solutions, or come up with something unique that suits your personal preferences.
- The simplest and most commonly used option is a wooden frame chicken coop. It has a pitched roof. The height of such a room varies from 170 cm at the rear wall to 210 cm at the entrance. Be sure to have a window and a walking yard measuring 200×450 centimeters.
- There is an interesting type of winter chicken coops in the form of a triangle. Such chicken coops are very similar in appearance to wigwams. Oddly enough, but such a structure is very optimal both in terms of space for the bird and the minimum consumption of building materials. In fact, the house has no walls, only a roof to the floor. Sizes are selected according to the number of chickens.
- You can also build a super chicken coop, which is often called a five-star coop. Such a room consists of two rooms and has dimensions of 4×5 meters. Of course, it has everything you need, including a perch with removable trays, doors for the birds to pass into the next room, a good ventilation system, and even heated floors.
How to build a warm winter chicken coop, see the following video.
