Building Chicken Coops and Keeping Chickens for Newbies

The other day, I had a great opportunity to visit some friends who pretty much "live off the land". When I say "live off the land" they grow their own food and raise chickens and other animals. I noticed several nicely built houses that had fences around them.

I was curious on what it was, and then my daughter (who is 2 years old) told me "Chickens Daddy" right away.

I was pretty amazed with how sufficient they were. This reminded me of stories of the old days my grandmother used to tell me about how there wasn’t any grocery stores around and how neighbors would trade their crops and chickens.

During this economy, I thought to myself what it would take to get a chicken coop started. I started to look around on the Internet to find out how popular this trend is getting. People are fed up with having 100.00 dollar grocery bills and the cost of meat is ridiculous. (So what would I need to get this started?) I thought to myself. So I started doing some research. I wanted to get all the facts along with what my friend was telling me and find what all I would need to do.

What came first the Chicken or the Coup?

I started thinking the first thing I would need to do was to locate some advice on building a chicken coop. I mean what good is it to have chickens without a place to keep them? I searched around looking for the right plans and found one pretty good site that taught me how to build a chicken coop step by step. I learned some very important tip when building a chicken coop that I never knew. As a matter of fact, I really didn’t know how complicated raising chickens could be for a beginner.

But, after you get the hang of how to get started it really is a easy process after finding this out. Here are some simple tips I learned that were crucial when setting up your first chicken coop.

Protection

When building you want a design that withstands the elements such as rain, sleet, snow and hail. Most importantly you want to a design that protects your chickens from predators.

Cleaning
You want to build a coop that provides proper ventilation and provides easy cleaning to spray off walls and roosts.

Manual and Automatic feeders

Whichever one you decide to choose, you want to make sure your design has the feeders in a place that provides easy access for your flock.

All of these were included in the plans that were found on this site I ran across. I then found a pretty good chicken manual which taught me how to raise chickens and it answered a ton of questions.

One of the simpler questions that most beginners ask, "How many eggs does a hen lay every year and do they lay all year?"

Keep in mind, I am a beginner so I needed some manuals that were quick and easy and this took awhile to come across but if you want to know how to protect and take care of your flock the right way the 2 links below seem to be the best I have found on the Internet.
More Information Here.