How to Design a Chicken Coop: Automatic Food & Water, Easy to Clean

[Music] hey everybody welcome back to another nature's always right video today is a very exciting day we're gonna check out my chicken coop finally I'll be showing you guys all the different features that make it work all the automatic systems that make it very easy and low maintenance to raise chickens and everything involved in the design of my coop so I designed to build this coop about two years ago now and it's been in use ever since then and I've had anywhere from 15 to 20 chickens in this coop this coop is 12 feet wide by 20 feet long it's almost 250 square feet on the bottom floor here this outer run here that I use for them I'm actually gonna be changing that soon but I had a little outer run you may have seen it in some of my older videos when I had some deer netting that was running and that was my actual fence but you know now if the market garnet garden running so well I can't have the chickens escaping anymore and I actually gotta prove my love my landlords to build a couple more beds here so I developed this coop with efficiency in mind and not wanting to have to do a lot of work for my chickens I've been raising chickens for a little over three years I use different types of coops seen different coops online you know research other designs from a lot of different people and basically I kind of just pieced together the best from all the different coops that I've seen integrated it in with a lot of my natural design techniques permaculture and what I need to have happen here on the farm making soil recycling all of my waste so let's go check out some of the features that make this coop so low maintenance and easy and I've got videos all about how to make each one of these systems so that you guys can do it for yourself as well so probably one of the first things you notice on my coop is these large tubes here and these are actually filled with food I have a video about how to build these for your chickens there's a few different types of automatic systems this one has worked extremely well for me largely because it's vertical and it's fed by gravity it's all made with like gutter pieces and they love using it and they cannot spill any of their grain out because the way I've built this so I'll be sure to check out my video so inside here I just use a funnel when I about every 12 to 15 days they get another 50-pound bag of food and it goes into all these tubes so I'm only coming out once every couple weeks to feed them now the other thing you're probably hearing is them clicking all over these and this is an automatic watering system built from PVC and poultry nipples those are those things that you see them clicking this is an awesome little system it's all hooked up to a 55-gallon drum that also collects rainwater here in San Diego we do not get a lot of rain so any little bit I like to capture so about six months out of a year I don't have to add in city water I'm able to use the water from the rain I've been very happy with this poultry nipple system I will say though I'm gonna try out the cups next that's another type of automatic water and I just feel that the cups are a lot more natural way for the chickens to drink water and then I watch them drink it from one of these little cups that fits into a PV system just like that it looks way more natural much more similar to how they would drink from a puddle so that's why I believe that it'll be a much better system I'm gonna of course do a video about how to build those but there's some great videos on YouTube already about it and since we're here anyways this is where they lay the eggs this is their nesting boxes and inside of here I've got five different nesting boxes they're about twelve or fourteen inches and width for your chickens depending on the breed you want a twelve by twelve by twelve little box here for them to make it really nice and comfortable I didn't teach them delay here they knew delay here because it's at a high point and because they want a cool dark protected area is protected on all sides except the front there there's a few eggs that they laid today okay and it's really really simple guys if you know for my latch here I just have a little drawstring with a screw so have an easy latch like that and now it's nice and locked so it's nice and safe it's a very simple egg laying system some day I'd love to have something where they lay the egg and it rolls out into a collection center because as some of you chicken raisers know occasionally they'll break them or you know sometimes they'll actually kick out their nests out of the way and if sometimes they'll lay an egg directly on the wood and it'll crack so having the nesting boxes get a slight slope and having it roll back into an automatic catcher will be a really cool feature and I hope to create that someday that's what they use for like the commercial poultry setups or if you've ever seen Joel self and style chicken tractors they use that alright let's go inside to see some other features but first check out this passion fruit this has been in the making for a long long time it's been growing well over a year now and this is another passion fruit I just put up and I've got a video about planting these and how to take care of passion fruits as well this actually is gonna be a giant shade structure for the chickens that's also gonna provide really delicious fruit passion fruits one of my favorite fruits it's extremely nutritious and it also sells very well at the markets so it's gonna be a great one it's one of my favorite for planting here in San Diego just a spectacular one loves the weather here and now in the summer these guys get incredible shade from it ok just for the door here guys very simple I've got a latch on the interior that's really important because these girls will try to escape and ravage my garden so the entire bottom of the coop here is lined with wood as you can see and on the ground there's a foundation of stone and actually got this stone from the next-door neighbor's over here they just had a ton laying over there asked the neighbor and he allowed me to use it this was a very cheap way of keeping the wood off of the ground so that it doesn't rot and it will last a lot longer I actually didn't treat any of this wood because I didn't want any chemicals in or around my chickens I'm also turning all this into soil I never wanted paint to flake off into my coop you'll also notice I put like this is a giant piece of shade cloth here 95% this was because it was getting so hot in the summer the chickens really needed some more shade also they kick up a lot of dust which was sending some dust out into my crops a little bit and I wanted to make more of a partition between the crops and the chickens so there wasn't really any crossover between them there's just two separate systems not influencing each other that has worked extremely well now looking at the actual chicken coop here you guys can see once again I've got up on blocks I'm a huge fan of vertical coops for many reasons and I just would recommend everyone build a coop like this where it's off of the ground because as you can see there's a lot of action going on and under here this provides a lot more square footage to the birds because now they can go under this coop as well and what I've done is provided all of their food their water and their supplements under the coop so for chickens the most important thing is to keep them cool they can withstand very cold temperatures but they can not overheat they cannot sweat and if it's really hot you'll even see them pants like a dog they'll have their mouth half open and breathing heavily and if you see your chickens doing that that means they're overheated so this allows them to have a 100% shade at all times they can just go underneath it it allows protection from the rain when they need it I'd also provide shade for the food and the water those are the reasons why I love vertical coops and there's one more special reason so now the supplements here I just have hanging this is typically what people will feed their chickens with and so every day they'll have to come out and put new food or new water putting water in these is also unsanitary a lot of times the chickens will somehow poop in them or you know different wild birds can drink from it and that could cause disease it is possible I don't use any of these hangers that's why I love using my feeding systems they're cleaner more efficient and saved me a ton of time if you added up the five minutes it takes to fill up water and food every single day for your chickens you know that adds up pretty quick to a lot of time anyways this supplement here I think it's called like chicken grits I forgot what we call it but it's basically just a bunch of little stones and pebbles that is swallowed by the chicken and goes into their organ called the crop this is an organ that actually will grind up seeds and grass and things that we as humans actually can't digest but they have this special organ that allows them to do that so in age to swallow these little stones I have this here for them in case they need it if they don't have this or they don't have access to small stones they can cause massive digestion issues and actually could they could die I believe they would get constipated because they just can't grind up that material and pass it through their digestive system so this stuff is actually called think tall pigeon grits something like that but it has charcoal it has the little rocks it has maybe potassium a couple other Rock supplements for them it's just good stuff and then I add in oyster shell as well moisture shell is super important for birds because if they don't supplement their calcium they can actually start eating their own eggshells to try and acquire calcium so that they're able to lay their eggs not having enough calcium source in their diet can cause weak shells and not well-formed shells as well so supplementing with oyster shell is really important and having these little rocks is also important for your chickens very cheap supplement for them the next gigantic benefit to having a raised coop and it's more ergonomic so as you can see you got my two double-wide doors here it opens up the entire inside of the coop and what it allows me to do is just put my wheelbarrow under here and then I can rake out all of their bedding straight into a wheelbarrow and then take it out of here to make soil I'm never having to bend over to do that right on the bottom floor of the coop I have a solid bottom because when I rake this out I wanted it to be very easy as long as I got strong here I have no problem with any dampness or wetness from the manure into the wood some people will have chicken wire on the bottom of their their cages and that's good for increased aeration but for me it's kind of annoying because I want to rake this out easily and it makes it more difficult that is another option you may want to consider if you want more ventilation okay then up here these are called the roofs and these roofs are where the chickens they like to be at the highest place in the coop so that's where they'll be I put them all at the same level you'll notice chickens are famous for the pecking order for having extreme hierarchy and a way to kind of prevent them attacking each other and making nicer for them is to have all the roofs at the same height that way there isn't a bird trying to get at that highest point to secure their dominance you know they can have more their dominance fights out here for food and other things otherwise they just you know especially when you introduce your new Birds little speck the heck out of each other I've had a great results with keeping the roost all the same height you'll also notice I used two by fours for my roost now many of my breeds are big ones so I've got the Rhode Island whites and then I have the black jersey giants the Blue Line dot and the barred rocks are my smallest and then the road on red there's in a medium-sized so I've got all different sizes of birds they all do well with the two by fours and the reason I went with two by fours and not an oak rounded dowel like you may see other people use is because I read a study online there's an actual scientific study studying the birds feet and how they respond to these different type of roofs as I understood the study essentially the argument they are making is that the structure of the chickens foot isn't such that it works well with those oaken dowels typically you'll see those oak dowels with in bird cages with cockatiels and other like pet birds and those birds have a different type of leg structure those birds actually have a knee cap that locks into place so for those oaken dowels that those are great for them because they can wrap around and then lock their knee but chickens don't have that ability their knees don't do that they actually will once you see them they'll sit down on their hind legs and they'll even they'll spread their legs across the whole piece of wood and then kind of wrap their toes over the edge and that's how they grip on for me these two by fours have had great results for all the different breeds that I mentioned I've never had bumblefoot I've never had any other issues with these chickens whatsoever having said that I have seen chickens raised with the oak dowels they also didn't have any feet problems take everything I guess with a grain of salt you know I think either works for me though I will continue to use the two by fours or a two by three might be even better for those small smaller or medium sized breeds I think that'd be a little bit more eye a deal for their foot size but a Rhode Island white or a black jersey giant I think they kind of benefit from that larger 2x4 size and even they'll even go up see this Ridge right here some of them will sit on that vertical edge is kind of so you can even give them options which I really agree with as well some of the smaller birds may prefer to sit on this because their funerals okay let's talk about something else in your design as I mentioned before heat and keeping heat out is one of the big factors that kills chickens well there's another factor that plays into that and that's ventilation so ventilation is important to get rid of excess heat it's also important because your chickens will drop a lot of manure here overnight and that creates a large ammonia buildup if you didn't have good ventilation in here and you didn't clean out your manure it would actually kill your chickens from toxic exposure to ammonia so you don't want to do that so having good ventilation is really important also cleaning out your coop for me I found that I only need to clean this out about once a month if I'm adding straw to this about once a week covering up the next layer of manure the layers have been newer always covered by a layer of straw I've noticed that the ammonia actually stays trapped inside of the straw and actually kind of you know some of that composting process is going on so it's kind of locking it in and not much is really off gassing that's what I've noticed that's worked well for me I also have very good ventilation you know I will poke my head in here to make sure everything's okay doesn't smell too much and the chickens even will come here and through here and mix their manure into the bedding getting rid of some of that ammonia as well that's another thing to keep in mind now how much ventilation do you need a good formula is just you need one square foot of ventilation per bird that you have so I've got a few different types of ventilation in here so I've got this side vent here I've got that back window there that is just hardware cloth this is one of the biggest ways that you'll be able to get ventilation is to actually just have an open side to your that's gonna give you a ton of square feet another way to get square feet is actually to drill in some large holes now you want to calculate the square footage because that's not actually that many square feet but what it does do is give a lot of air movement and at the top here I've also got another cracked vent right there so you'll notice that all around the top of my coop there's ventilation and what that is allowing there's a lot of air flow at the top there cooler air is able to enter from the bottom and then since most of the air holes are at the top it's actually gonna flow to the top and out and keep the air very fresh in here and nice and I try to place all of the air holes quite above and away from the roofs one of the things you want to avoid is giving an a draft near the chickens they don't want wind blowing on them constantly especially in winter so you'll notice all around I don't really have any where where that's gonna be occurring to them so that's something else that you really want to consider obviously a watertight roof as well and this roof is actually made from recycled material this roof was made from an old shed that was here on the property left by the previous owner what we did was just combine two pieces of it screwed it together with some watertight screws we put some caulking into the different holes on the roof I put down a very thin sheet of plywood that I put down this roof liner and then I put all that on top of a frame that is supporting the roof so it's all made from recycled material even this back wall you can kind of see it's made from different pieces that's recycled all these two by fours on the main frame now those are all new pieces here's an example you can see those support pieces so the roof is just bolted into those support pieces and that's it and this coop is actually strong enough that I can stand up inside of it here's the bottom I reinforced it here's the legs very simple now one other feature of this coop is having an automatic chicken door and this thing is actually solar-powered and it runs off of a battery and a timer there's a solar charger right there and the solar panel and basically the panel charges this battery and the battery powers that piston so that at a certain time when I tell the timer it will actually close and open this door and the door just runs on a simple little rail system that I built out of wood so this thing just goes up and down really simply I actually am NOT using this hardly at all anymore because I don't let the chickens free-range anymore I used to let him go out in the yard and then at night they would come in by themselves come up to the roost the door would close and I would never have anything to worry about so when setting up your door if you using a piston system like this the most important part is the rail system getting that to fit in there really smoothly not letting it find these pillars stop and go on the side to side these stop it from going forward and I left it loose so that there's no resistance that's gonna damage the piston motor up here you can see I've got a little piece of wood there that keeps it out away from being totally flush so that it'll move up and down smoothly but now that I have a different situation my market gardens fully built out and they're mostly living in here I'm not actually using this anymore so I'm probably gonna convert it and actually use that solar panel to charge my cordless drill instead but this is an amazing feature this is something I wanted to learn more about how to set something up like this learning about solar energy as well how to charge a battery and now I have some of those basic skills but this is a really awesome thing to have for your coop especially if you don't want to deal with waking up early or coming out late at night to shut the door that's why I really like having a really large coop that I can just let them hang out in and I they just come in and out of that door every night and I don't have to close anything or open anything for them so that's how I've gotten around that for myself if you can't get around that then having an automatic door is a great way to save yourself the time and trouble of opening and closing the door and there's even a simpler system that just runs on a string it's just like a timer a box like this that runs on a string and it just pulls it up and down it's another really simple system I've even seen a friend use as well okay so the next thing to talk about in this coop is my ladder I recommend keeping these ladder pieces really close together about you know every three inches because the chickens will really slip and slide on this wood and giving them some more places to put their feet will really help them I actually added more so that I'm slipping they could hurt their foot so my favorite feature about this ladder is I can remove it I came up with this idea because I wanted to make it really easy to clean this coop out so I want to be able to take the ladder out of here and and make it easy on myself so here's the little design it came up with so I just built this little block piece here like this and then I constructed a little triangular piece and attached it and then those just lock in like this and then it's really secure I've got this door so if I ever wanted to fully lock them in I can do that but nowadays I just keep it completely open but still very nice you want to have a way to completely enclose your coop if you ever need to or you've got really hardcore predator pressure this is just a little roost I built for them they love having extra places to jump and play on and they even jump on this as well so I've got a video about how how I built this and how I use this be sure to check it out basically this is just another little area where I make compost specifically for the chickens I'll build the pile let it heat up then I let them tear through it and mix it and eat whatever they want so this is another great idea for helping to supplement your chicken feeds and the help you create more soil it's also another fun structure for them to jump on and have fun on anything they can get high up on they they really enjoy that now I've got this crazy box with this tube what is that so this is a little bit gross this is an ongoing experiment that has been somewhat successful I'm still trying to get it to work oh this is it's called a soldier fly larvae bin I'll be putting out a video about how I built this box and how to start on how to raise them fairly soon so I'll be sure to tune in for that but basically what these guys are are a way to feed your chickens really high-quality protein and fat for free these guys can live off of kitchen waste meat manure they can live on milk dirt they can really eat anything and they're really non-pathogenic as well then once they're ready they've gotten big enough they'd eaten enough they'll actually walk up this ramp and fall right through that hole into the tube that I showed you out to the chickens and then the chickens get grubs just a really cool feeding system that I'm working on and have really operational this year and then next spring be able to really give you guys all the info and how to set one of these up yourself so one of my big goals with this chicken coop supposed to just show how easy and efficient you could make a coop how much little work you'd have to do and what's really cool is that these chickens have been able to provide me enough compost for the last year and a half on my small farm that I haven't had to buy it ever since you saw that cover crop episode rice spread out soil I'm here that's almost I don't know it's like climbing it on two years ago now ever since then I have not bought any more outside compost to make my starts and to feed my beds out here so it's pretty cool and I've proven it now that you can actually run a small farm or a large garden like this only on compost beneficial teas and other natural nutrients cover cropping these systems so that was one of my goals with this chicken coop very happy to say that it is possible the other goal with this coop is to prove that you can raise chickens essentially for free without having to buy grain feed now I've had a lot of other things to do so I haven't gotten as close as I've wanted but that soldier fly is a big part of it and then incorporating some other systems such as mealworms I'm acquiring restaurant waste and other free inputs that can feed the soldier fly of the mealworms and the chickens directly themselves so that's something I'm always working on and trying to get better at so that we can show some really interesting ways to recycle waste and feed chickens for very low cost alright guys that's it for today's episode I hope you really enjoyed seeing what my chicken-coop look like and seeing the different systems I hope that it inspires you guys to make a more efficient chicken system and make your chicken coops even better take even better care of your chickens raise better eggs maybe you're even inspired to raise chickens yourself and I just can't recommend them enough they're the most synergistic animal for humans ever they recycle all my waste they give me eggs and material to make soil and they're just tons of fun give you tons of entertainment and I really enjoy having been and working with them on a daily basis so I really can't recommend owning your own chickens enough if you guys have any questions about my coop or anything I may have forgotten to mention let me know down in the comments and I'll be sure to help you guys out sure to check out all my other videos about chickens and different ways you can help take care of them keep them healthier feed them free food thanks for watching have a great day happy farming and chicken raising and I'll see you guys in the next episode [Music]

Channel: Nature's Always Right

Views: 1,095,468

Rating: 4.9038086 out of 5

Keywords: garden, urban farming, permaculture, chickens, chicken coop, organic gardening, organic farming, urban farmer, natures always right, no till farming, urban gardener, urban gardening, urban garden, homesteading, black soldier fly larvae, easy to clean chicken coop, backyard chickens, urban chicken, poultry nipples, automatic food, automatic water, how to build a chicken coop, how to design a chicken coop, how to make a chicken coop, how to raise chickens

Id: G5QjAcTDkBw

Length: 26min 8sec (1568 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 01 2018