How to Build a Chicken Coop for less than $400.00

Believe it or not, this will eventually be our new chicken coop.

Right now the chickens are in a very nice barn with an attached run. It has one half for chicken and animal feed, the other half has perches for the chickens and my guinea fowl to sleep.

Why are we going to use an old trailer instead? Because the chicken barn is really nice! So I want hubs to clean it out and use it for storage of such things as snowmobilies, lawn mowers and other large items.

The run can be moved and attached to this trailer. The trailer will be moved to the back corner past where the existing chicken barn is. We have 100 acres so space is not an issue.

Right now hubs is building a door for the new chicken coop. He's gutted the insides and it will make a nice cozy barn for our chickens and guinea fowl. Hubs tries to do everything for free or as cheaply as possible.


The only reason it is so near the house is because hubs needs electricity for his power tools.

If you are thinking of getting chickens you need to build a proper home for them. The book on the left is pretty good with ideas an photos to go with it.

So if you aren't sure where to start, this book might just be for you.

Planting the Vegetable Garden

Planting Onions

Today we planted part of our vegetable garden. Hubby finished putting up chicken wire around the newly tilled land so that the pigs and chickens and guinea fowl could not get inside.

The new garden is about 25x30 feet and is close to the house. One area, defined by railroad ties, is our rhubarb patch. It's about 12x12. A second area about 12x18 is for zucchini.

Then we have a few rows each of spanish onions, cooking onions, green onions, garlic, red peppers, chives, mint and horseradish.

A final patch of tomatoes will complete the planting. Then we cross our fingers and hope!

Planting Mint

Most of the herbs we bought this year are planted in window boxes on our back deck but we wanted the mint and chives in the vegetable garden.

Plastic Made Using Chicken Feathers

Researchers have developed ways to substitute chicken feathers for petroleum in some plastic products, and at least two companies are working to bring items ranging from biodegradable flower pots to office furniture to market.



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Planting Pommes de Terre (Potatoes)

Planted potatoes today.

We've never done that before so should be interesting to see if they grow. If they do, we'll have 350 lb (yes POUNDS!) of potatoes in the fall. Sure hope our friends and family can use some because we still don't have a root cellar.

We planted Yukon Gold and some other kind, hubs doesn't recall the name.

Putting in a Vegetable Garden

Started to dig a vegetable garden today. Got it dug. Now need a fence around it to keep the piggies out.

'Reen can see it from the back deck and the mudroom. She wants me to plant tomatoes, zucchini, garlic, two kinds of onion, bell peppers, and horseradish.

She can freeze the grated zucchini and make zucchini bread all winter. Yum yum! 

I tilled the soil to make the garden around the existing rhubarb patch so we hope it spreads now.

Screaming Baby Pig

One week old baby pig does not like to be picked up

Pigs Help Out

Tilling a vegetable garden with the pigs

Is that a chicken in your pants?

Peterborough Ontario Police say an employee of a No Frills grocery store watched as a man stuffed four packages of chicken down his pants. When the security guard at the store tried to stop him from leaving, the man turned violent and punched him. 31 year old Jessie Adam Johnson is charged with assault with intent to resist arrest, theft and breach of probation.

A number of cockerels have been found dumped in Dunnet Forest in the north of Scotland

The Scottish SPCA is appealing for information after 11 cockerels were abandoned in Dunnet Forest near Thurso.

The dumped birds were reported to the charity by a member of the public on Monday.

Senior Inspector Audrey Gunn said: "When we arrived the cockerels weren't keen on getting close to us so we had to coax them with some bird food.

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Pigs Leave Home

we found out I'm allergic to pig urine so we had to move the baby piglets out to the garden shed near our house. Hubs rigged up a heat lamp for them to keep them warm.

So far they're doing fine but poor hubs has to set the alarm to go out and feed them every 4 hours during the night.

Great PIg Escape

We took the baby piglets out of the ensuite jacuzzi and put them in a huge wading pool in our basement family room. The smell in the ensuite was bothering me and they were noisy all night long, fighting and pushing and snorting.

After a few days in the basement we discovered they had figured out how to climb out of the wading pool!

Operation PIg Rescue

We had to bring our baby pigs inside as one died overnight in the cold. So we are taking care of them inside and bottle feeding them

Baby PIgs Born Today

Six pot belly pigs were born today on our hobby farm. There are 2 black ones and 4 spotted. The mother and father are black so we aren't sure where the spotted genetic material came from.

Our last litter of 3 baby pigs were crushed by the mom because she buried them deep in the straw and then lay on them. She couldn't see them but we can't remove the straw or the pigs will be cold and the babies will die.

We will have to think about what to do with this litter

Japan poultry farm begins chicken cull

A poultry farm in Japan has started culling about 150,000 chickens after confirming that chickens there had contracted the highly infectious H5 strain of bird flu.
The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry conducted tests on chickens that had already died at the firm. The dead birds tested positive for H5 bird flu in preliminary testing. This is the fifth outbreak of avian flu at a poultry farm in Japan this winter.

Scientists develop the first genetically modified chicken, engineered to prevent the spread of the H5N1 avian influenza virus

Scientists have developed the first genetically modified (GM) chicken, engineered to prevent the spread of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, and in the process have sparked a renewed debate about the development of biotechnology.

The researchers at the Roslin Institute of the University of Edingburgh and at the University of Cambridge bred the transgenic chicken to be unable to transmit avian influenza to other chickens.

Prof Helen Sang, from the Roslin Institute said she saw the development as a possible boon for farmers in areas where avian influenza is endemic.



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“A chicken in every pot”

“A chicken in every pot” has been used as a political promise and a slogan of hope for a brighter economic future since at least the reign of Henry IV and as late as the successful 1928 Republican presidential campaign.

The lowly chicken symbolizes prosperity for everyman in such political pronouncements.
Well, the chicken has returned to the political arena. However, this time the egg definitely comes before the chicken.

City dwellers across the country are petitioning their various governing bodies to allow them to raise chickens. When we say urban chickens, we are not talking about the noisy males of the species, but quiet, brooding hens, and hens, as an ironic hipster once noted, are only an egg’s way of making another egg.

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Afghanistan Chicken Farm

Members of the Kentucky Agribusiness Development Team visited a local chicken farm owner in Khinj district, Panjshayr province Afghanistan recently.

Shanawaz Khan is a Go Joeal villager who started his chicken farm about 16 months ago with 30 chickens. Khan now has more than 800 laying hens and he looks to continue the growth of his business in the future.

“I’d like to have 8,000 chickens to produce enough eggs for all of Panjshayr and one day, all of Afghanistan,” Khan said through an interpreter.



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This Is Y I Raise My Own Chickens And Hogs

Most of us have no idea what we are eating.



Washing, treating with chlorine, injecting (with brine) and rebranding chicken

China's ban on Manitoba poultry

China issued an announcement Thursday saying it had banned poultry and poultry imports from Manitoba after an outbreak of bird flu on a turkey farm here was reported last month. But chickens raised for meat are sold to supply the domestic market almost exclusively, the Manitoba Chicken Producers said Thursday. So I guess its a non issue.

FSA issues food poisoning warning over chicken livers

Caterers are being warned to cook chicken liver thoroughly after an increased number of campylobacter food poisoning outbreaks in the last year.

Data provided by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) revealed that 11 of the 15 outbreaks recorded this year at catering premises were linked to consuming poultry liver parfait or pâté.



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