How to build a turkey house with your own hands
Turkeys are whimsical birds, and their maintenance requires a comfortable poultry house. Any temperature drop is fraught with disease, as a result of which, a decrease in the egg production of turkeys. ... Good ventilation in the room and comfortable perches are also important. And in order to build a turkey house with your own hands, you need to know exactly what requirements it must meet.
Do-it-yourself turkey poultry
Requirements for the premises
In order for the bird to live in a turkey house in warmth and comfort, you need to think over in advance the plan for its construction and internal arrangement. Turkeys do not tolerate cold, heat and drafts. This means that the premises must exclude these factors.
In general terms, the requirements are similar to those of the rest of the poultry barns, except for a few factors. A good turkey house should:
- Be spacious enough. One adult should have at least 1-1.2 m². This space is enough for turkeys for 5-6 heads.
- Have insulated walls or some kind of additional heating. In regions with an aggressive climate and a strong drop in air temperature in winter, it is recommended to use steam or electric heating. Turkeys normally tolerate zero temperatures, but individuals brought from the southern regions are not always able to survive this. They need to maintain the temperature at around 10 ° C.
- Divide into sectors with a strong partition or mesh. This is done in order to avoid fights between males, as well as trampling of young animals while walking. Groups for separation in pens are formed so that adults live separately from turkeys.
- Have adequate natural or artificial lighting. It is very important to maintain egg production females and the development of young turkeys.
- Stay next to the walking paddock. It is better if such a platform is adjacent to the barn. It should be located in a quiet place, where humans and other farm animals are least likely to walk.
Tips for organizing space in the shed can be found on thematic sites and forums. Viewing photos and videos on the topic of building a shed for turkeys will allow even a beginner to understand everything.
Preparation for the construction of a turkey house
Before you build a turkey house with your own hands, you need to choose the right place for it. If the groundwater comes too close to the surface, then it is worth choosing a higher place, otherwise it will be damp in the barn even in the hottest weather.
Before construction, you need to develop drawings of the turkey poultry itself and the enclosure adjacent to it. So you can calculate the amount of material spent. If possible, adults should be fenced off from young animals and be allowed to walk separately. To do this, they organize an aviary with feeders and drinkers so that the birds can freely reach them. It is necessary to build a building with the expectation that the livestock will increase. No more than one adult turkey can be kept per 1m², as the birds are large and, unlike chickens, are not very fond of perches.
The barn project should include not only the poultry room itself and the corral, but also the vestibule. It will protect turkeys from drafts and exposure to cold air when opening the door. In order to save space. In the vestibule, you can make shelves for storing household equipment or food for animals and birds. Room layouts sometimes include a separate place for brooding turkeys, as well as small turkey poultry.
Good illumination in the barn helps the birds to increase egg production and the young to develop normally.
In order to consume less energy for artificial lighting of the room, it is recommended to take care of the windows. If during the day in the barn all the corners are lit, then the windows are positioned correctly and this is enough to illuminate the barn. The window is placed at a height of at least one meter above the ground.
Floors
Do-it-yourself construction of a turkey house involves laying smooth floors from wooden planks or concrete. This part of the barn plays an important role in protecting birds from weather and predators.
the floor in the turkey house itself should be done at an angle to facilitate the cleaning process. Often for this purpose, a removable flooring is made under the perch, since this place is most contaminated with feces.
Each farmer can choose the material for the flooring on their own. It can be concrete, wood, or earth. Each of these coatings has its own pros and cons:
- The earthen floor has a low cost and this is its only advantage. Such floors do not hold the temperature well in winter, they have to be covered with straw during frosts. Also, faeces, spilled water and feed residues mix with the ground to form a slurry. This violation of sanitary standards leads to fatal diseases. In winter, turkeys, standing in this slurry, can freeze their paws. Sometimes earth is mixed with clay in equal proportions. In this case, moisture repels better from the floor covering, but cleaning is still problematic. These floors have to be replaced frequently.
- The concrete floor is distinguished by the fact that it does not absorb moisture and lends itself well to cleaning and disinfection. It also reliably protects the floor from the digging of predators wishing to feast on turkey meat. The main disadvantage is that in winter it can get very cold, and it is recommended to cover it with straw or sawdust.
- A wooden floor requires a lot of material costs, but it protects turkeys from the cold better than others. It is easy enough to clean and disinfect it. But over time, the tree absorbs moisture, begins to swell and rot. If the turkey poultry is not cleaned in a timely manner, the smell of bird droppings is absorbed into the boards.
Whatever the floor in the barn is, the main requirement for it is ease of cleaning, as well as compliance with sanitary standards. It is recommended to place it 20-25 centimeters above the ground.
Walls and roof
We build according to the rules
A correct and reliable turkey house should be warm and dry, and special attention should be paid to its walls. In order for the room to maintain a temperature regime that will help keep the turkeys egg-laying throughout the autumn and winter, the walls must have good thermal insulation.
The turkey house is built from hollow frame walls inside and this space is filled with insulation of your choice:
- glass wool;
- sand;
- sawdust.
When working with sawdust, it is important to remember that mice and rats can start in this insulation. In the warmth, they will equip themselves a nest there, and then it will be almost impossible to remove the rodents. For this, sawdust is mixed with lime in a ratio of 25: 1.
Also, insulation tends to absorb moisture. To avoid this, it is packed in plastic bags and only then placed in the spaces in the walls.
Another option for erecting the walls of a barn is adobe. For many centuries, people have built from it not only buildings for poultry and livestock, but also their own homes.Clay and straw are used to make blocks that act as building materials. If the room has already been built, then the same mixture can be used to insulate it. To do this, shingles are stuffed on the walls from the inside - flat wooden slats located from the inside of the barn. They are stuffed diagonally from slopes in one direction, and then in the opposite direction. After that, straw and clay are stuffed into it. After the shingles or adobe walls have dried, they are whitewashed with lime.
The roof is made sloping in order to allow precipitation to drain freely from it and to facilitate the process of removing snow in winter. It is necessary to make an insulation layer on the roof. Simply covering it with slate or tiles is not enough. The ceiling is insulated with a layer of cellophane or roofing material. Thus, you can protect the turkey house and its inhabitants from drafts and cold.
It is not recommended to make the ceiling too high if the turkey house does not have additional heating. All the warm air will collect at the top, and the turkeys will freeze and ache.
Ventilation
How to build a turkey house yourself without such an important detail as ventilation. The feces of turkeys have a very high content of ammonia and its accumulation in the room will not result in anything good. To do this, a ventilation duct is made under the ceiling with a pipe leading to the outside. The sash must be made so that it can be opened in normal weather and closed in severe frosts. All parts of the box are placed on the ceiling so that the turkeys do not reach and fill it up.
Lack of clean air and oxygen, entails inhibition in the development of young animals and a decrease in the egg production of females. In addition, if you go into a turkey or chicken coop, you can smell the ammonia.
In the summer, it makes no sense to use ventilation at all. For ventilation, it is enough to open windows and doors.
Barn arrangement
When the construction has already been completed, you can proceed to the next stage. The arrangement of a turkey house plays an equally important role in keeping turkeys. It is necessary to properly distribute the space so that the birds can easily reach the drinkers and feeder.
In the turkey house, roosts are necessarily installed. They can be made of even poles, of such width that the bird can almost completely wrap its paws around it. The pole should be flat, without knots and splinters. Better to sand them before installing.
The perches are placed near the warmest wall, usually a blank wall without windows. You can install them in such a way that the perches are one above the other. This saves space, but the topmost turkeys will shit on the lower seated birds. To avoid this problem, it is recommended to place the poles on the ladder principle. The lowest crossbar should be at least 80 centimeters from the floor, and the uppermost 80 centimeters from the ceiling.
In order for the bird to rush more willingly in the turkey house install nests from boxes, one for every 4-5 turkeys. Arranging double-decker nests will help save space.
It is also necessary to install an ash bath in which the birds can clean their feathers. The feeders are installed in a place where all turkeys have access to it. Drinking bowls are recommended to be installed at the level of the turkeys' heads. This is done so that the water is not splashed.
Conclusion
In the construction and equipment of a turkey house, it is necessary to use every available centimeter. And if you don't have the opportunity to build a shed for turkeys with your own hands, then you can use a ready-made building for this purpose.
The construction of a turkey poultry house begins in early spring in order to have time to finish it by winter. A detailed description of the construction process can be found in thematic videos and photos on the relevant sites on the network.