These are the same push-in style nipples we use to make our waterers, sold separately in packs of five. They are made of quality stainless steel parts inside a durable, hard, red plastic casing, and they’re sealed with a long-lasting silicone grommet. Made in China.
Use a 3/8″ drill bit to make a hole in your tubing or container. Insert the grommet first, then the nipple. Moistening it may help it go in easier. If you are going to seal your container, be sure to create a separate hole near the top (above the water line) so that air can enter as the water goes out.
These are the same push-in style nipples we use to make our waterers, sold separately in packs of five. They are made of quality stainless steel parts inside a durable, hard, red plastic casing, and they’re sealed with a long-lasting silicone grommet. Take a look.
For the past few winters, I’ve wrapped our Garden Coop in plastic sheeting to keep driving rain and snow (mostly rain here in the Pacific Northwest) out of the run area.
I’d love to say I do this for artistic reasons, à laChristo, but it’s really all about practicality. Plastic film is inexpensive, easy to put up, and keeps your hens dry and happy. And in the spring, you can just take it down, roll it up, and store it out of the way.
There are other solutions, of course — sheet siding, acrylic panels, canvas, landscape fabric. Let me know in the comments what has worked for you. (more…)
In particular, their Internal Wood Stabilizer product is ideally suited for chicken coops like The Garden Coop and The Garden Ark, safely protecting exposed exterior softwoods from rot and moisture damage in a way that stain or paint alone cannot.
Several months ago on the advice of a customer, I decided to make a DIY nipple waterer for our backyard chickens. Our birds were just chicks at the time, and keeping them supplied with fresh, clean water with their jar-and-saucer waterer was a frequent chore.
So I fashioned a simple waterer from a used plastic jug and a poultry nipple I bought online. The chicks took right to it, and the difference was remarkable.
No more spilled water. No more poopy water. No more worrying that their water had run dry.
When the flock graduated to the coop, their makeshift waterer went with them, and I started working on a more permanent solution for their larger space.
Here’s the nipple waterer I came up with — which I now also make to sell — and some videos showing you what you get and how it works. (more…)
This is the last in a four-part series on getting your chickens and coop ready for the winter.
Once you’ve done everything else, you may find that you still want to provide extra warmth in your coop. We don’t heat the chicken coops in our yard, but many backyard chicken keepers in steady sub-freezing conditions have success with artificial (electric) heat, through lamps, radiant heaters, and heated waterers.
Here are some tips I’ve gathered from customers and others who have used electric heat effectively: (more…)
This is the third in a four-part series on getting your chickens and coop ready for the winter.
Now we turn to the coop itself. In mild climates, chickens need only basic protection from the elements year round. If your coop keeps your hens dry and away from drafts, chances are you don’t need to make any special changes to it for the winter. If you expect temperatures to dip below freezing for a sustained time, you may want to take some added precautions to winterize your chicken coop:(more…)
This is the second in a four-part series on preparing your backyard chickens and coop for cold weather.
Most standard laying hens are quite cold hardy (check this handy breed chart). Just look at their names: Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire Red. . . . These girls were bred to withstand cold climates well before the advent of electric heat. So how do they manage to withstand temperatures that send us scampering for the nearest cup of cocoa? (more…)
Whether it’s your first winter keeping chickens or your fiftieth, it’s helpful to have a checklist for preparing your backyard coop for the change of seasons. Of course, what’s on your list will depend on a lot of things including your particular climate, coop design, chicken breeds, routines, and more.
In this four-part series, I’ll share what has worked for us to get our backyard chickens and coops ready for the cold. I’ll also include several ideas offered by The Garden Coop Facebook community and others on how to keep your flock healthy all winter long. So here we go. . . (more…)
I’ve been looking into this recently, since one of our hens, a Welsummer, is passing the typical three-week window of broodiness. Here are three of the most common methods we’ve found for breaking a hen’s broody mood:
Put the hen in a small cage with a wire bottom (at least 1″ square openings) and elevate it off the ground so that cool air can circulate underneath. Include food and water, of course. It may take a few days in solitary to do the trick.
After dark, move the hen from her nesting box onto the perch with the rest of the flock, and block her access back into the nesting box for the night. It may take a few nights of doing this to see results.
Dunk the hen in a bucket of cool water up to her neck. Some claim luck with this, others not.
All these methods have something to do with cooling down the temperature of the hen’s chest. There’s also always the option of finding someone with fertile eggs to hatch and letting your hen do the job. It’s worth noting too that some breeds (Buff Orpingtons, for instance) go broody more often than others.
From a coop design standpoint, this is where an extra nesting box can come in handy. When a hen is broody, she will not want to get out of her box. That leaves the others either searching for a new place to lay their eggs or — as we’ve seen with our flock — to climb into the box with the broody hen and lay their eggs there anyway.
Strange birds.
Have you successfully broken a broody hen? How’d you do it? And if you couldn’t snap her out of it, what happened next? Leave a reply and let us know!
Apparently, people, there is a growing problem with urban foxes in the major cities of Australia. I learned about this from a customer who wrote for ways to keep his flock secure from these foxes in a mobile chicken coop like The Garden Ark.
To hear what I proposed pertaining to predator proofing his portable poultry pen, please press play. . .
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Madison, Wisconsin. Where the winters are mean and the chickens are many. I got a note recently from Dan Marleau, a customer in Madison, who wanted to pass along this video tour of his backyard chicken coop, built using The Garden Coop plans and adding some of his own modifications. Take a look.
I asked Dan if he would share more of his experience keeping chickens in cold climates, specifically, what extra steps did he take to prepare his Garden Coop and his flock for the Wisconsin winter. Here’s what he had to say. . . (more…)
You’ve picked out the cutest little fluff balls you could find to start your flock. Now it’s time to set them up in a brooder, give them some feed and water, and hope they grow into a sturdy flock of backyard hens (no roosters. . . no roosters. . .).
There aren’t too many choices you have to make right now, but there are some. Medicated or organic feed? Where to put the brooder? What bedding to use? How to control the dust? (Chicks produce an unfathomable amount of nano-chicky-dust.)
I’ll post more on these topics soon. But for now, check out this chronicle from Amy over at Garden Rant. She’s starting a small flock too and gives a good description of the basic setup.
Kara and Jeff M. sent me a couple of winter updates from their Garden Coop in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I thought I’d share some of their ideas here for anyone looking to give their chickens a little extra protection from the snow and cold. Here’s update #1:
There was a blizzard here overnight and so far we have 18″, and it’s still snowing and blowing. It’s been bitterly cold all week, and we’ve been contemplating what to do to make sure our girls are safe and secure.
Finally, last night in the dark, Jeff and a friend wrapped the run in heavy plastic—leaving the ceiling open. It worked wonderfully! It might not be the most perfect job (done in the dark and trying to beat the storm), but it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. . .
If you keep small birds as pets, you may have heard that you shouldn’t use galvanized hardware cloth when making your own birdcage. The reason is that high levels of zinc can be toxic (this is true for humans too). When hardware cloth is galvanized, sometimes little globs of it will be left near where two wires cross. Small birds that use their beaks to climb and maneuver around their cage can eventually break these off and swallow them whole.
This is not a problem with chickens, however, both because of their much larger size and because they don’t climb or chew on the cloth with their beaks.
What about plants? Plants actually need zinc, though as with anything, too much can be harmful. You’ll notice with your hardware cloth that, over time, the finish begins to get duller. This is the zinc gradually weathering off the wire, washing down to the ground. This process happens so slowly that it should not create a harmful buildup of zinc in the soil.
I got this question from a coop builder a few months ago:
“A friend saw that I had bought OSB [oriented strand board] and mentioned that this was a potential hazard due to formaldehyde emissions. What are your thoughts on this? Am I better off returning it and going with plywood?”
Some background first. Formaldehyde is used in the resins (glues) of some manufactured wood products like plywood and particle board. The emissions the builder was concerned about are often referred to as “offgassing” or “outgassing,” which is the gradual release or evaporation of chemicals from a building material. If these vapors build up in an enclosed space, like a car or home, it could lead to a problem. But what about in a chicken coop?
In addition to fully assembled chicken waterers, we’re now also offering the push-in poultry nipples you need to make your own.
For visitors to TheGardenCoop.com, I’ve arranged a 
I’ve been looking into this recently, since one of our hens, a Welsummer, is passing the typical three-week window of broodiness. Here are three of the most common methods we’ve found for breaking a hen’s broody mood:
You’ve picked out the cutest little fluff balls you could find to start your flock. Now it’s time to set them up in a brooder, give them some feed and water, and hope they grow into a sturdy flock of backyard hens (no roosters. . . no roosters. . .).
There was a blizzard here overnight and so far we have 18″, and it’s still snowing and blowing. It’s been bitterly cold all week, and we’ve been contemplating what to do to make sure our girls are safe and secure.
I got this question from a coop builder a few months ago:
