Next, take a piece of wood two-by-four in dimension, cut to a length equal to the width of the cabinet. Position the wood at the back side of the cabinet. This will serve as the roost to keep the eggs from touching the foil base of the cabinet as the foil could get too hot to the touch. Line the wood with chicken wire to help keep the eggs from rolling off.

The next step is to install the lights. The lights will of course serve as the heat source for your chicken incubator. Choose 15-watt bulbs for this purpose. Install four of these to optimize the temperature to 98 to 102 degrees F. Place the bulbs on the top and the back wall of the cabinet.

To accurately monitor the temperature, you will also need to install a thermometer inside the incubator, at a spot where it will not be directly exposed to the light. The first 24 hours is crucial, so make sure to constantly check the temperature to see that it remains consistent.

Finally, you need to set up your ventilation system. To do this, you will need to drill half-inch holes—about four to six of them—around the cabinet. Then take a pie tin, fill this with water, and set it on the floor of the cabinet. This will keep the humidity levels inside your chicken incubator constant as well.

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Getting your chicks from chicken hatcheries is a great and convenient way to start your poultry. Before you place your orders with your hatchery of choice, it is also important that you know your shipping options. For best results, it is always recommended that you deal with chicken hatcheries nearest you. Remember that the chicks you ordered will be shipped to you via mail, so the shorter the route from the hatchery to your house, the better for the health of the chickens. To ensure that they get to you in time, opt to ship them via priority or express mail.

Worried about how the chicks will be fed and watered in transit? They don’t need to. This is because right before they hatch, they absorb most of the nutritional content of their egg yolks. This is enough to sustain them for three days without food or water. As such, chicken hatcheries should ship them out on the day they hatch, so that they have enough food stored in their bodies for the two- or three-day shipping.

What chickens do need is warmth during transportation. This is the reason why it is usual for a chicken hatchery to require minimum orders of 10, 15 or 25 chicks per shipping. The chicks are placed inside small cardboard boxes, or big cardboard boxes with smaller divisions, so they can keep each other warm by exchanging body heat through contact. When your chicks arrive, expect a call from your local post office to tell you that they are ready for pick up.

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Yes, it is possible—and quite customary—to order chickens and have them delivered by mail. This is because chicks absorb most of the yolk’s content right before they hatch. This gives them enough food to last for three days, so they don’t need to be fed for that duration. When you pick them up and take them home, they are only likely to be thirsty but they will be fine.

That settled, the bigger challenge lies in selecting the type of chicken that you want to raise. To decide on this, you need to consider at least two questions. First, do you want your poultry to produce eggs by themselves? If you do, you may want to check out some of the heritage breeds rather than the modern crosses as the former are likely to be more productive.

The next thing that you need to thing about is whether you want your chickens to lay eggs or be good enough to sell as meat or both. Some breeds will have tender meat while others will be great layers. You need to decide which ones you want, and if you want the best of both worlds, you need to think about the breed proportion.

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Raising chickens is definitely a good source of income. Aside from the fact that you can benefit from selling your chickens once they reach a marketable age and size, you can also earn income from selling poultry products such as eggs to the public and chicks to other poultry raisers. In addition, maintaining and operating a poultry farm is relatively easy and fuss-free once you have everything set up and running.

But how do you set up a chicken farm when you do not have enough space to lay out your chicken coops and chicken houses? Especially for backyard chicken farmers, it is essential that your available space should be well thought-out and planned so you can maximize your poultry farm.

So how do set up your chickens’ living spaces given the limited space? The answer to space considerations is to go for chicken arks instead of chicken coops.  Chicken arks work just like chicken coops by providing a space for the chickens to roam about and interact with other chickens, where they can eat and drink, and where they can rest and nest.

The advantage of chicken arks over chicken coops is that the former is portable. Typical chicken ark models have no floors, so it is easy to uninstall them and move them around, depending on the space limitations. A chicken ark is also typically smaller than a chicken coop, and is made of lighter materials. If your background is relatively secure from predators, then chicken runs can adequately keep your chickens safe and healthy.

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Chicken houses are not easy to build. If you are trying to put together any of these glorified chicken coops, you need to remember that the safety of your chickens is your major consideration.

First: safety should be your utmost concern. The objective for the exercise is to come up with a chicken house where your chickens can live safely, and protected against the elements and their natural predators. There are several ways to do this, one of which is to install the chicken house in such a way that it is facing the sun so that your chicken coop remains dry especially during the wet season. On humid days, the sun’s rays can also prevent dampness inside the chicken house. Remember that a damp chicken house can cause your chickens to become sick.

Choosing a spot for your chicken spot also requires selecting a high and dry place so that the water runs off from the chicken house during rains or heavy storms. This will also facilitate cleaning of the chicken house as you can easily hose down waste off and away from the chicken coop. During the cold months, it might also be useful to install an electric light as your heat source.

The chicken wire around your chicken house should be installed in such a way that it can stand attack or impact of natural predators. Aside from the construction concerns, the material that you use for your chicken coops should also be strong enough such that predators cannot chew into the chicken coop. Make sure, too, that the walls are buried deep into the ground to prevent burrowing predators such as rodents from digging a tunnel into the coop.

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