The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: seldomseen on February 21, 2011, 08:30:34 am

Title: building a chicken hutch
Post by: seldomseen on February 21, 2011, 08:30:34 am

I love seeing how other ppls have done theirs so here is my own built Chicken house
I build this last yr for our chickens, to put you in the picture, the temps in the summer are 50 to 60 deg  and during the winter they drop as low as minus 25, so everything has to be well sheltered and be able to cope with the extremes.
No money I went looking around for materials to make this and found a load of old house stones, I think they are volcanic stones not sure.

(http://i765.photobucket.com/albums/xx294/Martathegaot/henshouse.gif)
and 2 weeks later it looked like this....
(http://i765.photobucket.com/albums/xx294/Martathegaot/henhouse2.gif)
the roof I got a bit elaberate with and decided to store their hay for bedding ontop...
the bit that suprised me was they actually laid eggs in the small lean too thats got a pull up roof lol
and not one bit of cement went into the making of this, its all kept together with cow poo and clay with straw thrown in for good measure. Even the lining is made of clay and hay mix.....  ;D

Title: Re: building a chicken hutch
Post by: faith0504 on February 21, 2011, 10:41:51 am

it looks really good, nice style  :wave:

Title: Re: building a chicken hutch
Post by: Anke on February 21, 2011, 01:41:50 pm

Hay on top would keep it well insulated in Winter I guess!

Ours have to be moveable/dismantleable so that we can swap fields for them, and ours did well this winter despite quite a few nights at well below minus 10. Just easy wood construction.

Title: Re: building a chicken hutch
Post by: NorthEssexsmallholding on February 21, 2011, 01:51:21 pm

Great job! not easy to build one for both weather extremes.

Title: Re: building a chicken hutch
Post by: Castle Farm on February 21, 2011, 04:45:55 pm

Just out of interest, do you get red mite where you are ? ;)

Title: Re: building a chicken hutch
Post by: seldomseen on February 21, 2011, 07:18:26 pm

We do get mites, the vet visits for free and takes care of the medicines for all the animals and birds, but red mite! Not that I know of, why should I be looking for some horrible stinky byter or something lol....we do get a horrible burrowing cricket, they are eeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk let me out of here type creature, and the what I call tiger tick big brown body...yep they are big and their legs are stripey, they are the only ones that bite me, the others crawl all over me but prefer to get their heads crushed by my fingers and thumb. lol I got bit by 3 tiger ticks last yr and the area still itches like crazy

Title: Re: building a chicken hutch
Post by: scotelf on February 21, 2011, 09:35:04 pm

Lovely chicken house, sure they will be really happy with it  :)

I do not like to think of the burrowing cricket though.....YUK!