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Welcome to my backyard chicken course. I'm Steve Maxwell. I'm the course creator and instructor
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and I'm going to show you how to build a chicken house like this. This is one of the actual houses we have on my
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rural property on Manitoulin Island in Canada. And this design is the product of almost 20 years of keeping chickens
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So this isn't the first house we've made, but it certainly is the best. And the purpose of this video
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is to show you something of the plans, to help get you familiar with the plans
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And that's what you see here, exploded view of all the parts. The first thing I want to point out is how
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the body of the house is made out of plywood. The reason for that is simplicity of construction
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and lightweight coupled with a lot of strength. So if you look at the side pieces
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the bottom, the back, the door, these are all made out of 5 eighths inch thick plywood
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And why that thickness? Well, three quarters is thicker than you need
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Half an inch is kind of too thin. It's very easy to break that wood apart when you're driving screws and things because it is so thin
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So 5x works quite well. On the outside you see like here for instance is some solid wood This is 5 eighths inch thick In this case pressure treated fence boards
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They work quite well. They're reasonably priced. And it adds not only a nice look, but also some strength
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where you needed. In this case, on the side, this is extra strength
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and material for hinging the door. Here on this side of the house, the pieces of wood
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are really just for looks, although they do add some strength to. The lid is made entirely out of solid wood
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And you can see some lap joints here. I'll be going into detail about how to do that
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and some cap boards that form the front and the sides of the lid
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In this case, the lid hinges open. And that's one of the important features of this design
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the top of the lid is actually this clear synthetic roofing material
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It's corrugated, but it's clear. So it lets in a lot of light
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Chickens love light. And it helps to warm the house during the winter
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Where I live, we will regularly see temperatures down to minus 25 or minus 30
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And yet on a sunny day inside the house, the temperature rises to something like freezing
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which is quite an improvement. Now we also have hot summers where I live and that's where the hinged
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lid comes in because you can you can lift that lid up and you can prop it open and that will give lots of ventilation So the chickens will not overheat And it a great feature that I find works quite well
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These houses are movable. That's another very important part of the design because in my experience
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if you keep chickens in the same place forever, you get all kinds of problems
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The grass is going to be beaten down. You're not going to be able to take advantage of the nutrients
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from the manure pests and diseases start to increase as well. So this house is entirely movable
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And if you look down here, you can see the network of one-inch diameter galvanized steel pipes that the house sits on
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This gets it up off the ground, so there's no issues with rot
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It also gives a place for the chickens to hide underneath the house
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when they're free-ranging during the day. I'll explain more about this as the course goes on
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But also there's another advantage, and that's that it raises the house up off the ground enough
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So snow isn't an issue. We don't get a whole lot of snow where I live
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We might get a foot or two at any one given time during the winter
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But those raised, galvanized steel legs get the house up off the snow
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So the door can still open. You're not digging down to get to your house
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because it's surrounded by snow. It's a system that works really well
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and I use the same one diameter steel pipes here with some elbows and some flanges to form a handle There also a corresponding handle on the other side
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So two people can easily lift this and move it to a new place. You could put a trailer hitch, some sort of a hitch here on this cross piece
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so that you could pull the unit around, just drag it on those metal feet
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and because of these four-by-four base runners, you can also slip the forks of a tractor-loader
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underneath if you want to move it that way too, if you really want to go the easy route
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All of this design adds up to something that I think is pretty valuable
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and that's ease of construction. I designed this house with one of my sons
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That's Jacob here. He's about 16. at the time this photo was taken
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and he built these houses. We designed them together. He put them together with my assistance
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He doesn't have a whole lot of experience with woodworking but the project came together very well
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and I'm sure it can for you too. So I'm here to help
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There are plans, there are videos, illustrations, photos, lots of text. But I'm also standing by to help you individually
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That's what this course is all about. so don't puzzle about any questions you have or anything that might not be clear
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Let me know. I'll clear things up for you and help you to get into the backyard chicken game as easily and successfully as possible
