Chicken House Plans

[Namres]

You probably need housing like that. With us here it does not get that cold, so wouldnt need to go into such extremes.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Regardless, you would still need a barn about 30ft X50 ft in length. With that many birds, you will also need a place to store your tools, equipment, and have adequate grain storage. I have a horse barn, and I use 3 large drum barrels to store grain- I'm thinking you would need more than that with 300 birds. Even with my horses and 3 large oil drums I still have to go buy grain every two weeks. It can totally be done! And you can have 300 birds quite easily, but you do need a large enough barn to do it. I would have the barn plumbed for water and wired for electricity. Otherwise, watering that many birds could be a real project if you don't think hard about how to incorporate those things first. I would recommend a nipple system in that case, too. And if you're going to do that, then you'll need to heat your barn (just a little) to keep your water from freezing (if you do get freezing temps). Also, think about using Roll Out nest boxes. With that many birds, they will likely eat the eggs or break them. They make industrial metal roll out boxes or you could always make them yourself. You may want to think about having a built in brooder area into your barn that would be heated or support the wiring for heat lamps.

BTW- even if you don't get cold- you will still need the barn for night time predator protection and for a place for your birds to roost.

 

[Namres]

Quote:
Hi, thanks for all the good info.

Just an idea on what we have here at the moment.
We already have a brooding station that can accommodate around 100 chics. It works pretty well and will be upgraded to fit 300 - 400 if necessary. In there there is also all the storage facility for the feed, so that is no problem.

When the chics get older we have larger cages which we move on lawn. Onloy if large enough they will go "down" to the other chickens.

The hens have real freerange space. I recon they run on approximatly 3 hectares at the moment. We have them pretty well trained so they lay their eggs in the nests which are fenced off where their ccop is. In this coop there are 70 hens so far. We are receiving 200 day old layers end of the month, which will be added to the brooding house. From there we want to build the new coop for these. Their fenced area will be approximatly 150 - 200 square meters. But they will also be able to forage outside, as i mentioned before on roughly 3-4 hectares. Basically what we need to build is a place big enough for them to sleep at night and lay their eggs. We maybe get frost once or twice a year. 3 days of frost at night are very seldom. We have had chickens for 3 years now and never lost any due to weather. Snake, eagle or jackal yes!

So, this is the basic setup here.