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Chicken House Plans – Don’t Forget The Nesting Boxes
By Dog Lover | May 30, 2009
Don’t forget this important part of your chicken house plans.
If your chicken house plans don’t include designs for proper nesting boxes, throw them away.Well, maybe.
Nesting boxes are necessary for several reasons, but primarily – the chickens need them.The nesting box is the comfortable, safe area where the hen feels safe enough to relax in some shade and away from the light.
A general rule is to create nesting boxes on a ration of one for every three to five hens. When a hen is ready to lay an egg, she will search for that quiet, private place – something that is soothing and safe. The nesting box fills this purpose and gives the chickens that safe, comfortable place to lay eggs.
Nesting boxes are not only beneficial to the chickens, but they are helpful for those folks who are raising chickens as well.Basically, it centralizes the area for egg production and keeps your chicken house organized. Without nesting boxes, chickens will find any place, and I mean any place, to lay eggs.Then you would have a real egg hunt when it was time to get eggs from your chicken house. Another benefit for the chicken raising folks, nesting boxes makes it easier to collect the eggs and to determine freshness.You can determine the freshness of certain eggs because of the order and time you collect your eggs from the nesting boxes.
So Now, How Do You Construct The Nesting Box?
Size is important to remember when making nesting boxes.They need to small in some respect to the chicken so that it feels comfortable and safe.However, you must not make the nesting boxes so small that it becomes difficult to clean them.An appropriately sized nesting box is about one foot square. However, check your local feed supplier or farm veterinarian for the specific kind of chickens you are raising.
For more on the design of the nesting boxes, read the rest of the article here for complete chicken house plans
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