Author: Anna & Mark

Perdue
Farms has been experimenting with probiotics in an effort to raise
chickens without anitbiotics for the past 5 years.



Enterococcus, Lactobacillus,
and Bifidobacterium seem to be the top three of poultry probiotics.



Probiotics might be a
worthwhile experiment if we were raising large numbers of Free
Range-Organic-Antibiotic Free chickens to sell for a profit. We briefly
considered trying that back in our early days. The conclusion we came
to was that people in our area would not be willing to pay the extra
amount for the increased quality. I’m not sure a medium sized chicken
grower could operate a small probiotic lab and still be cost effective?

When I built our first
chicken coop we were short on both time and money.



Someday I’d like to build a
bigger and better coop incorporating some of the lessons we’ve learned
over the years since we first started raising chickens.



1. Make the door big enough
for a wheelbarrow.



We took a couple doors off an
old camper and regret not being able to have the extra elbow room. A
regular or oversized door would make coop cleaning a whole lot easier.



2. Use increments of 8 to
choose how big you want to go.



In my opinion the length or
width should not be shorter than 8 feet. Keep in mind a sheet of
plywood is 8×4.



3. Make it a tight fit.



You might get lucky the first
year or two, but eventually a local predator will come sniffing around.
I noticed we’ve got a problem with little birds swooping in to feast on
laying pellets.