Chicken Housing

Chickens are easy to manage and they provide fresh eggs and, yes, meat.  Hatching eggs is very easy and preparing your own meat is not as bad as people make it seem.  You don’t need to listen to commercial chicken farmers with their 1,001 rules and regulations when you’re keeping a private flock.

A simple shed can be converted into an excellent hen house. Here, David (7) is about to gather eggs from the nest boxes that open from outside the coop.

Easy access nest boxes allows kids to collect eggs and stay clean.

When a new batch of babies are ready to go outside, we simply chase the old ladies out for the days and let the little ones settle in.

The old ladies are penned in during garden season, but allowed to roam during the winter. You can see their entrances into the coop in the background. We have about 50 (15 laying hens, 2 roosters and a bunch of babies) birds using a 10'x12' coop kept nice and clean. We collect a dozen eggs per day.