November/December 1995 Backwoods Home Magazine
FARM/GARDEN
Roof: Build the walls first and place the 2” x 4” rafters on the walls. Keep it simple but neat. It’s only a chicken coop, not a home for a queen.
front wall
7½ feet tall x 8 feet long)
Back wall
(5 feet tall x 8 feet long)
Overhanging roof: 18inches long and angled on an approximate 30degree pitch to prevent summer sun from shin-ing in but allowing win-ter sun to warm the coop.
Door
(2½ feet wide)
Floor (5 feet wide x 8 feet long)
Floor: Supported on concrete blocks to prevent varmints from nesting under the coop.
November/December 1995 Backwoods Home Magazine
Overhanging roof to offer a cool
interior in the summer and warmth
in the winter months. 18” x 8’ with
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a 30 degree pitch.
Window: Your choice of size.
The window should be on the
south side in conjunction with
overhanging roof.
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Chicken entry way. Preferably a
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night. 14” high x 10” high.
know you will be home. Always lock them up in the pen and even the chick-en hou at night to discourage preda-tion. Another drawback: eggs are sometimes harder to find with free range chickens. You may find your-lf playing a game of hide-and-go-ek reminiscent of an Easter egg hunt.
Fenced chickens are not necessarily unhappy. An ample supply of feed, yard clippings, garden weeds, and kitchen scraps will pacify the most unruly of flocks. If you have a preda-tor problem, you may want to opt for the fenced chicken yard. I have a fenced area adjacent to the chicken yard for a pasture. I water it and allow the weeds and grass to grow tall. It is an area safe from most predators. Regardless of the method ud to con-fine your flock, you should still keep feed in the coop for them and always have fresh water available for them. Cannibalism
Chickens can become very aggres-sive toward one individual in the flock and may constantly peck a
t the vent (anal area). There are many factors which can trigger cannibalism in chickens, and this undesirable behav-ior can be prevented. Overcrowding in the coop may cau cannibalism. Chickens need a comfort space and each size of bird is different. Too much light can cau pecking as well, especially in the winter when a heat lamp is being ud to keep the flock warm. You can avoid this problem by using a red heat lamp bulb in the coop instead of a white heat lamp bulb. Overheating is another triggering mechanism of cannibalism. Rai the heat lamp or increa the ventilation to lower the temperature in the coop. It’s important to have ventilation with-out drafts. A new chicken, a different breed of chicken, or the one “on the bottom of the totem pole” may be the victim of cannibalism. If this happens and the others just won’t leave it alone, your only alternative may be to
parate it from the others.
Roosters will often mate with a hen
so often that her back has no feathers,
but this is far different from cannibal-
ism. A rooster is only doing a rvice,
unlike the cannibalistic chickens
which are trying to kill their coop
mate.
If you find that you have a problem
with cannibalism in a flock, about the
only way to stop the behavior is to
remove the unlucky chicken. You will
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still have to determine the cau of theheir是什么意思
behavior and make the necessary
adjustments, or the flock will simply
begin pecking at the next bird in order
of dominance. Normally, if precau-
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avoided.
Feed
Everyone has probably noticed that
commercial eggs have a light yellow
yolk. This is becau the chickens are
provided with only commercial laying
feed. Often, the white of the egg is
runny, and this is an indication of its
age. The whites of fresh eggs usually
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stand up and don’t run or spread out
like the commercial eggs. Depending
on what you feed the chicken, the yolk
may be a pale yellow (as with a strict
commercial feed diet) or they may be
orange-yellow, as with free-range
chickens.
I feed my Black Australorps vegeta-
bles and fruit along with chicken
scratch and 16% lay crumbles. I prefer
to feed crumbles as oppod to pellets
becau there is some evidence that
pelleted feed will induce cannibalism
in a flock. If you want to stay with an
organic diet, the best thing to do is to
rai your own grain. Don’t feed very
much corn, as that will put on a lot of
fat around the ovaries, and a fat chick-
en lays no eggs. Wheat, milo, barley,
and oats are the grains most often
ud. The goal is to reach as clo to a
16% protein diet as possible for the
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laying hens.
You will need to provide your flock
with a diet of crushed oyster shell as a
calcium source for egg shell produc-
tion. You can find oyster shell at your
local feed store. You may also feed
your birds egg shells, but here is a
word of warning: dry and crush them
first, or they may begin eating all the
eggs they lay. Eating an occasional
egg is normal, but not all of them.
A high grade fertilizer
Ten chickens can produce around
380 pounds of wet manure annually,
which when dried will yield approxi-
mately 92 pounds of high grade fertil-
izer. Chicken droppings have twice
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the bulk of the excrement is water.
Chicken droppings are high in nitro-
gen—nearly 9%—and will burn many
cielab
garden plants if applied raw.
However, the droppings and the litter
from the chicken coop can be com-
posted to yield a good organic fertiliz-
er. My lawn looks fantastic since I
started applying chicken compost to it.
Dias and virus
It cannot be denied that chickens do
carry dias and virus. I was con-
cerned about catching something from
my own birds, so I will pass on the
information that I found.
Most chicken dias are species
specific; that is, they cannot be trans-
November/December 1995 Backwoods Home Magazine
The interior. Nesting box dimensions:
individual, 12x12; community, 12x48.
Roosting poles: one or two tree limbs
at least two inches in diameter.
Nesting boxes
Roosts
mitted to humans. The dias that can be transmitted to humans are east-ern encephalitis, western encephalitis, and St. Louis encephalitis. However, studies by the Centers for Dia Control (CDC) have shown that young chicks, from birth to six weeks old, are very susceptible to dis
ea and virus. “It’s usually the younger chicks that can infect a lot of mosqui-toes. Mosquitoes pick up the virus from the young chicks and pass it on to humans,” says Dr. Robert McLean of the Fort Collins, Colorado, CDC office. McLean leads the avian rearch for arbovirus rearch in the Western United States. McLean says that chicks six weeks old to six months old will almost never pass the virus on to humans, and full-grown chickens have a very slim chance of harboring the virus. McLean states that rearch suggests the temperature of the chicken determines if the virus can survive in its body. A chick’s body temperature is 20° higher than a full grown chicken’s body tempera-ture.
The best way to prevent dia is to rotate your chicken yard about every two years to protect the health of the flock. Another tip may be to brood your chicks in the early spring before mosquito ason begins.
The organic link
Chickens can be very advantageous for the organic gardener. If you turn a few chickens loo in the garden after the plants have grown a few inches tall, the chickens will pick the plot clean of slugs, earwigs, sowbugs, and other pests. Bantams are especially good in gardens. It’s helpful to let the chi
ckens become familiar with the garden. The best way to do this is by growing the garden near the coop. Finally, my best advice is to give the chickens tender loving care. There are some that say chickens don’t need a heat lamp in the winter, and perhaps I spoil my chickens, but my black Australorps’ egg production falls off only on the coldest of days. A heat lamp will also keep the water from freezing and save you many trips out to the hen hou to dump the ice. If you find you cannot provide a heat lamp, the chickens will learn to drink water when it is provided before it freezes. You will have to change it more often, though.
A small flock of chickens will pro-vide you with plentiful eggs as well as delicious meat if you so choo. I keep nine hens and a rooster, and the girls lay an average of 45 eggs a week. What I don’t eat, I ll to my neigh-bors to pay for chicken feed. Generally, the flock is lf supporting. Several mail order companies spe-cialize in chickens. A couple are: Sunny Creek Hatchery
Red Lake Falls, MN 56750 (218) 253-2291
Murray McMurray Hatchery Webster City, IA 50595-0458 (800) 456-3280
(515) 832-3280 ∆
November/December 1995 Backwoods Home Magazine
