Eggs from your own chickens are among the most healthy of foods. So, after building our home, recovering from all the work we did ourselves and getting a Great Pyrenees to keep the predators away, a chicken coop was built using mostly leftover materials from construction. Did a good bit of research and planning before building the coop with the large pen around it. This video was originally posted on Vid.me (which is no more) in April almost 2-years ago.
Chickens were originally tropical forest animals and seem to like it here in the middle of our forestland. Rhode Island Reds are best for this location because they blend so well into the oak tree forest floor, in case they need to hide, and can do so amazingly well. Had a few Buff Orpingtons at first and some of them went missing before any of the RIRs. We let the chickens out of the pen mid-day after most of the laying, so its not like Easter hunting for eggs every day.
When my flock is a bit off, they get some Smart Colloidal Silver in their water. In the amount of drinking water consumed in a day, I add 10 ml per 100 pounds of birds. The first day, I scale up the amount by the ratio of the water container size over the amount of water consumed to get the right concentration. This also keeps the water from turning bad because silver is a full-spectrum antimicrobial. This only works with real colloidal silver that contains predominantly nanoparticles, instead of ions which quickly react and become ineffective. I give the flock half that amount every day as a preventative when bird flu is in the area. More information about real colloidal silver is at http://smartcolloidal.com/RealColloidalSilver.html . This paragraph is only to share what I do for information purposes on my homestead for eggs not sold and is not a recommendation. The FDA has not approved colloidal silver in poultry water as a treatment, cure or prevention which might cut into the profits of their big pharma owners.
Here are links mentioned in the video:
https://chickendoors.com
https://the-chicken-chick.com/
https://www.coopsnmore.com/4_Pack_of_Grey_plastic_egg_nesting_box_pads_p/2381.htm
Hope you find this helpful and I look forward to your comments
