Chicken Housing

In preparation for next year's chickens, I have been thinking (and reading) a lot about how to house these chickens. Keep in mind that there are four families, 12 people in all that will need to be supplied with eggs and meat for an entire year. We figured about five dozen eggs per week and about 40 to 50 whole chickens per year for meat. Exactly, we'll need a whole pile of chickens.

Since we don't have thousands of dollars to blow on chicken housing we needed to be resourceful so I've been watching the papers and different classified ad sites looking for used sheds.

We hit the jackpot last week. A neighbor is moving and they had a nice size shed so we asked if they would be interested in selling. Sure enough, a 12 x 24 shed, only two years old was ours for $600 as long as we do the moving. Check out the pictures below:

My brother-in-law on one of the two forklifts used to move the behemoth.

This should give you an idea of the size of this thing!

Here we are manuevering the shed to it's temporary resting place until we find something more permanant. It has two double doors in front so I'll probably partition off the inside to make the chicken housing area about 12 x 15 and use the rest for storage or possibly turkeys. It needs nest boxes, roosts, feeders, water, maybe electric, etc., etc. So, I have a great winter project ahead. I'll post periodic updates. Stay tuned.