Chicken Coops and a Guide to Processing

Learned an nice tip this past weekend when building your coop: don't use chicken wire, use stucco netting. It is chicken wire, but it is 3 feet high instead of 4 feet, and one gauge smaller wire size. On a square footage basis, it is about 1/3 the cost.

I got mine at Home Depot. The stucco netting is not in same aisle as the fencing and chicken wire. You have to look for the rolls of it in the construction stuff, in the drywall aisle.

My hens have not even started laying yet, but I'm always thinking ahead.

Here is a guide to killing and bleeding the birds:
http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/08/processing-chickens-with-my-son.html

Here is a quick guide to ease the process of scalding your own birds, which makes plucking easy:

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-properly-scald-chicken-my-never.html


Here is a blog devoted to explaining the whole process of processing your own chickens:

http://butcherachicken.blogspot.com/