poultry house design birds

greetings. i'm shad and i'm coming at you from atitlanorganics here in tzununa, lake atitlan, guatemala. today we're going to be talking about alternativeways to keep happy healthy chickens no matter where you live in the world. before we get into that, i want to start bylooking at ecosystems. i'm gonna paint you a picture. imagine there's a raccoon walking along ina forest and all of a sudden, boom, it drops over and dies. what happens?

within a matter of minutes, things start tocome and use the resources that are from that raccoon body. maybe some birds come and get some of thefur. some scavengers eat some of meat and withina couple of days all of the raccoon body has been worked back into the forest. this is an example of a healthy ecosystemand of an active decay cycle! but let's look at an alternative. what happens if that same raccoon is walkingin a walmart parking lot and falls over and dies?

then what happens? the next day maybe some flies come and laysome eggs. maybe a couple of seagulls or pigeons or someweird birds come. it starts to smell really bad. it could potentially get people sick. and eventually someone has to come and expend energy and effort to clean it up because that resource has become a waste. and that's the big difference. an active decay cycle has no waste.

all potential waste gets worked back intothe system. but what does this have to do with chickens? well lets consider out typical backyard chickensetup. everyone recommends that first you build achicken coup and then you give them a range, maybe sectioned off by fence. or maybe they don't have any fence and they'rejust allowed to go wherever they want. but what happens over time? on the first day the chickens go out and theyeat all of their favourite plants and all of their favourite bugs.

they go back in. the next day they go and eat their next favouriteplants and bugs. as soon as their favourite plants start togrow again the chickens immediately come and eat them back down. and over time the chickens change the compositionof plant species that are growing on their range. now the range is no longer providing the nutritionalbenefits for the chickens. furthermore, their manure and constant scratchingburns the organic matter and creates bare patches and hard ground in the range.

it starts to look less like a forest and morelike a walmart parking lot. which leads to unhealthy or sick land, whicheventually leads to sick chickens. so if free range is not an acceptable solution,then what are our alternatives? as long as you have enough space to builda small chicken coup, you can keep happy healthy hens. how do we do this? we will build the active decay cycle directlyunderneath the chickens. so lets go check this system out! so here we are inside the deeply bedded, stationarychicken house.

and as we said before, we're actually goingto build a compost underneath our chickens. so, before we go any further, we need to talkabout the basic recipe of compost. every compost system has two basic types ofingredients. on the one hand, you have carbon. organic material that is dry and brown isconsidered high in carbon. examples might be straw or hay, wood chips,dried leaves, or even newspaper or cardboard. on the other hand, we have nitrogen. nitrogen is green and wet organic matter. all manure and urine, as well as green plantmaterial, and kitchen scraps are high in nitrogen.

if we mix them together at 30:1, we have perfectrecipe for hot compost. it you're wondering what 30:1 actually means,i strongly suggest that you check it out online and look around a little. this principle is very important in the compostingprocess. in short, every organic material has an inherentcarbon-to-nitrogen ratio. for example, this cotton shirt has one orwood, or leaves . all material has a carbon to nitrogen ratio. and you want to mix them so that they balanceto 30 to 1. in a more practical setting, what does thatmean?

it means to follow your nose. nitrogen is the waste. it smells bad. carbon is the diaper. we use the carbon to balance the nitrogen. we use the diaper to absorb the waste. so when in doubt, add more carbon. and when you do this, you always get a greatcompost pile. as you can see here, we are now in the deepbedding.

this is a real live compost pile that is beingturned and maintained by our chickens. what happens is as we add organic matter andcarbon to the top and they add nitrogen, three layers start to form. the top layer is what they're scratching inand contains things like the straw and the wood chips that we add, even sticks that goin here as well as left over kitchen scraps. some green material that's left over as well,also gets left in here. that's the top layer and that's what the chickensare actively scratching. the next layer down you can see from abouthere to here is partially composted organic material and it's really hot.

and if you smell it, it doesn't smell at all. it smells like a forest. that is because it is an ecosystem. and this is where all the micro-organismsare. this is where the chickens are actually tryingto get to. the bottom layer is about where i have dugdown to, again this more than a meter deep. when we get down to the bottom layer, whatactually forms is a layer of dark, rich, finished compost. this compost is amazing for the garden.

you can put it on fruit trees. on vegetable gardens. anything. and this is all over the bottom of the chickenhouse. you get about 10-20 cm of this at the bottomand each layer above that is about 30-40 cm. alright so let's wrap this video up by lookingat two things. let's look at how to build this type of houseand lets look at how to manage it. depending on where you live, you'll have totake special precautions for predators or

for weather or climate conditions. beyond that, there's only really two specialdesign aspects of this type of chicken house. the first is that you need to have a wall. a wall or some sort of container that holdsin your deep bedding. this wall goes down a meter twenty. we recommend a minimum of 70 cm of depth. the other design aspect is that we want tomake sure that our poop always falls into the bedding and not on to hard surfaces. this is the walmart parking lot.

we want to make sure that the raccoon alwaysdies in the forest. so as you can see, there is a design flawin our house. we should have put the walls here. now, because we didn't, every morning we comein with our broom and we sweep off all our chicken poop. as with all chicken houses, you need to provideyour hens with a few basic necessities to keep them happy and comfortable. you need some perches for them sleep onthat are raised above the ground. you need a feeder or two. you need nestboxes and you also need a waterer.

and we recommend that all of this stuff shouldbe raised above ground level. that way no compost gets kicked into the feedor water. we recommend using chicken wire that allowsthe chicken poop to fall straight down into the bedding to build the tables and supports. its a good idea to make 50% of your roof outof transparent material to allow sunlight in. don't forget that chickens also need to beprotected from drafts, but do like some airflow during the hot weather. before you build your house, you have to askyourself one question.

how many hens do you want? the number of hens will determine the sizeof your house. we recommend two hens per square meter. as for the management of this house, in additionto chicken feed and water, we recommend that twice daily, you bring your kitchen scrapsand all the garden wastes right into the house and throw it into the compost. we also recommend that once daily you bringa carbon source in and spread it over the wetter spots in the area. we like to make sure that the house isn'ttoo wet or too dry.

compost needs moisture to really get startedand really heat up, so often times we water the house. we also like to help the chickens by turningthe compost a little bit for them each morning. this not only helps the compost to heat up,but it provides the chickens access to deeper layers in the compost so that they can gofind good treats to eat and help us in the composting process. one of the most important parts of the managementof this house is that you have to practice the two-day poop test. the way you do that is first you find a realfresh, steamy chicken turd and you make a

mental note of where it is. then you come back the next day and look tosee if you can find it. if you can find it, then your house has failedthe two day poop test. the goal is that within twenty four hours,all of the poop is worked back into bedding. imagine that. on only two meters by two meters, you canget yourself eight hens and produce over 2000 eggs and over five cubic meters of compostevery year. say what??? for real!

so if you're down with happy healthy hensand tons of hot compost and super awesome eggs, check out our design and build yourown today!

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