Free Keep Chickens!: Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces by Barbara Kilarski

direct-soil composting.
    A mobile chicken pen allows you to have your chickens “graze” different sections of your yard, tilling and composting the soil as they go.
The Right Coop in the Right Place
    Location, location, location is the guiding mantra for real estate, no matter what type of building — a simple restored cottage, a sprawling Victorian mansion, or a chicken coop. In the long run, location matters much more than appearance.
    If local code specifies certain setback restrictions, put these into play in your yard. You know about how large the coop needs to be (see How Big? ). Eliminate from the list of possible sites those that won’t accommodate the coop without exceeding the setback boundaries. Depending on the code where you live, the boundary may be related to the nearest door, window, or property line of neighboring residents.
    Common sense and courtesy dictate that you should locate the coop site as far away as you can from your windows and your neighbors’ windows. By practicing coop etiquette in the planning stages, you prevent the likelihood that the scent of summer-warmed chicken droppings will waft into any nearby windows — including yours. As an added preventive measure for my own coop, I planted jasmine and honeysuckle on one side of the henhouse and run. Their lovely and scented blossoms upstage any unlikely possibility of a whiff of chicken coop on a breezy day.
    Bird Word
    While the chicken coop should be properly ventilated to avoid a build-up of moisture, the hen-house needs to be relatively draft-free so chickens don’t catch cold in the winter.
    Make sure the proposed chicken run gets adequate amounts of both sun and shade, so if you’re not home during the day in summer, your chickens won’t roast inside their coop. Also make sure that the proposed coop is not sited on ground that’s lower than the rest of the yard. Otherwise, be ready to provide your hens with snorkeling equipment during rainy weather.
    When you have settled on the most likely coop site, envision where you will put the door leading into the coop, making sure it will have plenty of room to swing out. You must give yourself access to the nest boxes (where hens lay their eggs), especially if you are building a short coop you can’t enter standing up.
    Once you find the right site in your yard, use string or spray paint to outline the general size of the coop area on the ground. Double-check to make sure the run has enough room for each hen. Check the paint or string boundaries once and then again. If you are confident that the coop is the right size, is in the right place, and falls within setback regulations, then you’re ready to proceed with construction.
Breaking Ground
    Chickens don’t care what their coop and henhouse look like, so long as their living arrangements are clean, dry, warm, easy to clean, and adequately ventilated. As you imagine your future coop, begin in your mind’s eye with a basic structure made from wood — a shed, an A-frame cabin, or an enclosed lean-to. Then let your imagination run free, like a chicken in an unfenced clover pasture.
    Supplies and equipment for a simple coop and henhouse can run as low as $100. A larger, roomier coop, like the one I built, might cost a few hundred dollars. All supplies are readily available at any well-stocked hardware store.
The Foundation
    To protect the floor of your henhouse from ground moisture, which leads to rot, you must keep it raised off the ground. Setting the henhouse on cement blocks will work. However, setting the house on a solid cement slab is better, because it insulates the birds from drafts and prevents incursions from tunneling rats. A cement slab can also serve as the actual floor of the henhouse; it’s easy to scrape and sweep.
    If you decide to go with the cement blocks, make sure that the floor of the henhouse, when set on the blocks, is level. You may have to dig out around the blocks and fiddle with their placement to achieve a