Ever fancied keeping a few chickens? You can’t beat a fresh egg, and what better than one hatched the very morning you eat it: sizzling bacon, a bit of fried bread topped with a pert, golden egg delivered by the old speckled hen. It doesn’t matter where you live, Madrid, on the costas or in the campo, keeping chickens is a fairly straightforward exercise in animal husbandry.
The first thing to purchase is a chicken coop. A wooden chicken coop can accommodate your feathered friends in the lap of luxury (nothing like a happy chicken to get them eggs coming). Inside the des res there should be timber nesting boxes with sawdust or straw for egg laying, nice and soft on the bottom, and horizontal wooden poles for roosting at night; the rest of the time they’re simply scratching about doing what chickens do, which isn’t much.
Coops vary in construction according to where they are to be situated. If you want to keep laying hens in Alicante, for example, a small contained timber unit would be needed. It allows the birds to move and gives them access to laying boxes, but obviously isn’t attached to a run. You feed the chickens from the front of the coop and retrieve the eggs from the rear, which kind of sums up chickens in a nutshell. But it is humane, providing they are well fed and watered. And, it’s amazing how attached one can become to these rather brainless creatures; they all have their own characters and can be quite endearing when petted.
The same chicken coop principle applies to those keeping birds in the countryside, but with land to utilise a chicken-wire run for scratching is worth considering. Wooden post can be used to support the wire, giving a more aesthetically pleasing appearance, or plain metal poles for a utilitarian look. So, good food, plenty of clean water, a bit of loving care and attention and those eggs could be on the breakfast table in no time. However, make certain the chicken coop is of solid construction with treated timber against pests and the elements. Foxes live in the campo and they love chickens, and they don’t care if they’re not cooked.
So choose a quality coop to house your little beauties. Woodworks Direct can provide a flat-pack coop to fit any location, and quality and value for money are central to their business ethic. So get a professionally made chicken coop, look after those birds and you won’t have to install searchlights against a mass break out – I’m thinking The Great Escape here – cue music. Happy chickening!
Visit www.woodworksdirect.com to see the range of animal outbuildings and sheds that Woodworks Direct manufacture.
