DIY Chicken House Plans: The Best Way to Build a Backyard Coop!

Great looking chicken house designs.

Great looking chicken coop designs.

If you’re considering building a chicken house in your yard, you will have to first organize every aspect to perfection.

This is why you need chicken coop blueprints as they contain the most effective details for constructing a ideal chicken house on your own.

With the help of an easy to understand step-by-step guide, you can build a coop to accommodate to your poultry.

There’s nothing worse than being geared up to finish your project only to realize that you’ve missed an something important step or could have added another feature in the planning stages.

Therefore, you can see, it always to have some guidance in the beginning when you have no prior experience in building coops.

What to consider when building your own DIY chicken coop

First thing that you need to consider is the kind of building material that is required for building a perfect hen house. Definitely, you won’t like your shed to made from barrels and some glue. Though you should always opt for quality material, but you should try to get most of the material from around your house, or even from your old chicken shed or coop.

If you don’t have enough material, you can even ask your neighbors and friends. Most of them would be happy to provide you some of the material and scrap wood, which is best for building a good coop.

My friend's simple chicken coop. width=

This is my friend's coop. He used easy chicken house blueprints & sent me this afterwards.

One of the most overlooked part when building your chicken coop is landscaping. This is really important and should be done even before you pick up a screwdriver or hammer. Good chicken coop blueprints will also explain where you need to build your coop, amount of space you should have, area that is required to landscape, and many more tips.

Before building your chicken coop, you should also decide on the size of your flock. Are you interested in a small flock of 3-5 chickens? Or do you want to keep a big flock of 40 to 60 chickens? For big flocks and layer hens, you would have to arrange 1.5 – 2 square feet of space per chicken inside the coop.

Good chicken coop designs also consider various types of predators that live in the area. Do you reside in a place that has big animals such as bears and coyotes? Or are you surrounded by much small critters like raccoons and skunks?

If there are lots of nocturnal animals in your place, then you need really strong and better chicken house. If predators come out during broad daylight, then you would have to arrange for a better fence.

Where to find small chicken coop blueprints:

  • If you have excellent DIY skills, and can draw well, then you can make a blueprint ready. This will also save you considerably on labor cost. Aside from that, since you know your backyard well, you’d be the best person for this job!
  • You can seek assistance from your family members and friends who may help you in coming up with some practical plans.
  • You can get in touch with few chicken breeders in your area who may be able to provide you one, or may put you in touch with the right person for this job.
  • Lastly, you can search on the Internet for chicken house plans. There are many reputable websites that offer such plans. You can either use them as per their specifications or modify them according to your own needs.

With a right chicken coop blueprint, building your own coop can be a pure fun, allow you to care take of your backyard chickens, and you can also save money over the long term. With the help of step-by-step guide, you will know exactly where you are during your project because every step in laid out in easy to understand terms.

How to Build a Chicken Coop That Lasts a Lifetime!

the-chicken-coopIf you’ve been researching building a chicken coop in your backyard, then you have probably already realize that it’s going to need to be sturdy. But have you considered weather conditions, and the overall protection of your chickens?

Here are a few things you need to know to build a coop.

1. Purchase Designs. You need to download the right designs when learning how to build a chicken coop that lasts a lifetime. The instructions and blueprints are essential for making the most out of your coop.

2. Quality Materials. It’s tempting when you first start looking over the building materials to use low-quality wood. Well, I can tell you from personal experience that it’s a bad idea. When I was building my first coop, I shaved the costs and later ended up paying over twice the amount to build another one. Long story short, it’s better to spend $100 extra now, then $200+ in the future.

3. Large vs Small Coops. Some owners want to have a small flock, while others want a large one. Make sure you think about how many chickens to plan to raise before you start the building process. The sizes can be dramatically different, and the blueprints you buy should include all of the required specifications.

4. Healthy Chickens. In order for your chickens to be healthy and happy, you must exercise them daily and always make sure they are fed on time. Doing this not only keeps them happy, but also allows them to stay healthy as well. This is an important step to ensure that your chickens to not catch any illnesses.

5. High Ground. When if rains, the wood inside and outside your coop will be affected. Using quality materials can only go so far, and you must make sure to build your coop on high ground if you live in an area that gets a lot of rainfall. When you do this, it makes the water drain down into your yard instead of gathering inside the coop and causing problems.

If you keep the facts I mentioned above in mind, you will set yourself up to have a coop that lasts well into the future. My second coop that I built with sturdy materials is still standing strong after 5 years, and I it was worth every penny extra I paid.

Build it Yourself: Backyard Chicken Coops

I really enjoyed this blog post by Dan Cohen and decided to re-post it on my blog. In the article, he reveals how he got started, and a few tips you need to know. I’m only able to re-post some of the article here, but you can read the full article at the link below.


When Dan Cohen’s wife asked him to build a chicken coop five years ago, she wanted one for convenience’s sake. She was sick of driving the five miles to her son’s house whenever she wanted fresh eggs; she had decided it was high time to get her own chickens.

It took a few days for Cohen to build the coop, but when he finished, his wife was pleased. She even told him that he should consider selling the wood structures for a bit of extra money. He laughed the idea off at first.

“I did a lot of fancy stuff where I wasn’t going to lower myself and build chicken coops,” Cohen says.

After a few months, however, he finally gave in to his wife’s suggestion and put a picture of his coop on Craigslist. The next day, he had 20 emails asking about it.

“That’s when I said ‘oh my goodness, there’s something here,’” he says.

His business quickly escalated; Cohen built 100 chicken coops his first year which ballooned into 1,500 four and a half years later.

Source:
http://magblog.audubon.org/build-it-yourself-backyard-chicken-coops