Chicken Coop Tour – The Garden Coop

Posted on April 30, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

Recommended step by step chicken coop plans:

  1. Building A Chicken Coop
  2. Chicken DIY Guide

Video Transcription:

 

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Video: Easy DIY Chicken Coop Plans

Posted on April 29, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

These two comprehensive guides are very helpful if you are interested in building your own chicken coop:

  1. Building A Chicken Coop
  2. Chicken DIY Guide

Video Transcription:

 

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How to Raise Chickens: Some Questions and Answers

Posted on April 28, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

Get detailed, step-by-step plans for building a chicken coop at Bill Keene’s Building a Chicken Coop OR Chicken DIY Guide for more info.

 

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The Basics of How to Build a Chicken Coop

Posted on April 18, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

When you are considering the best options in learning how to build a chicken coop, there are various factors to keep in mind. From the cost, materials, time commitment, the uses, how many chickens you have, and how handy you are when it comes to construction. Keeping these factors in mind, and knowing what it takes to build your coop, are all factors which will make for simple and solid construction, and a chicken coop which is bound to properly house and keep your chickens safe.

How To Build A Chicken Coop Step 1: Design It

how to build a chicken coopEven if you are not a handy man (or woman), if you are looking to build your own chicken coop, you must simply start the design process. There are dozens of books, online sites, floor plans, and guides which can be followed. Therefore, coming up with your own design and blueprints, and then seeking out some information as to how to go about the construction process, allows you to make something that is all your own and unique, while still ensuring the chicken coop stands and does not topple over due to the lack of structure.

How To Build A Chicken Coop Step 2: Space & Zoning Laws

Once you have chosen the tools to use, and have looked over various plans, guides, and information needed to build your chicken coop, you must next determine the size. Considering the location you are going to build the coop, local city and zoning ordinances, how many chickens you own (or plan to own down the line), and of course considering the purpose (breeding, or just cultivating your own eggs), will help in determining the size to go with for a new chicken coop. Additionally, when determining the size, you will have to consider the surrounding space, proper amount of elevation up off the ground, and ensuring you will be able to maintain and upkeep the coop, so that the chickens remain healthy, and safe in the coop.

How To Build A Chicken Coop Step 3: Plan to Build

Prior to even starting construction, purchasing materials, or developing a floor plan, you have to know where you will place the coop, and find the proper surrounding area to place the chicken coop. Whether it is your back yard, or whether you have private land elsewhere, clearing the land, digging the land, and making sure you have properly made all necessary improvements to the land should be done prior to any construction even getting underway. If the land is not ready, your chicken coop cannot be built; therefore, if you do not have a piece of land that is separate for the coop, make sure to first clear and develop that land, and plan on how you are going to tackle the project, in order to ensure you are going to be able to start and complete the project.

How To Build A Chicken Coop – Consider Different Approaches

When you plan on building a chicken coop, although you are going to use a guide, books, plans, and other items to help you build the coop, considering back up plans, and considering your own plan of attack is also something that should be done. Not only will this give you a backup in the event something goes wrong, but it will also allow you to throw in your own twists and turns. From adding in additional windows, to adding more posts for the chickens to sleep on; if you have your own concept, and blend it in with what the guides have to say, you can come up with something great, something all your own, and something that is going to provide for your chickens and keep them safe.

How To Build A Chicken Coop Summary

There is no rule book when it comes to designing a chicken coop. although there are online guides, books, professionals, and expert advice you can turn to, it is really about building something that fits your desired use, and the space you have set up for the construction. So, although you do have to ensure it is soundly constructed, and will not topple over, or self destruct due to the incorrect building guidelines and specs, you should consider your personal needs, your desires, and making sure you have the right space and time to maintain your chicken coop, when seeking out the best methods on how to build a chicken coop.

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Mistakes To Avoid When Building A Chicken Coop

Posted on April 18, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

Building a chicken coop is a necessity if you want to raise this kind of livestock. Chickens are relatively easy to take care of, and can be a fine source of meat, or much more commonly, eggs. Building a chicken coop is not hard, but many people make mistakes their first time. Here are several things to make sure you do to ensure your chickens have a good place to live.

Building A Chicken Coop and Legality

It might be tempting to start building chicken coops right away somewhere on your property. However, not all areas allow you to raise livestock, and there might be limitations on what you can do. Check with the local laws in your area and see if raising chickens is a viable option before you begin your project.

Have The Right Amount of Space Before Building A Chicken Coop

Chickens are not completely sedentary animals. They will spend a certain amount of time sitting on their eggs, but they will also need space to exercise. Make sure your coop is sufficiently large. Plan on having at least three square feet of space so that your chickens have enough room to move around. Many first-time builders end up with cramped and upset chickens that will not lay eggs.

Read The Plans Before Building A Chicken Coop

Read chicken coop plans straight through, from beginning to end before you start on a DIY chicken coop. You can ensure that you only have to make one trip to a hardware or home improvement store in order to purchase supplies. Also, make sure you have enough room. More than one coop has been built in a basement or workshop, and the finished product was too big to make it out the door.

Have Your Coop at the Right Height

Chicken coops should be raised up off the ground. A height of around 4-6 inches should be enough to deter snakes, which may eat chicken eggs. The nests in your coop should be higher up, as this makes the hens feel safe, and they will reward you with more eggs.

Have A Run If You Are Building A Chicken Coop

Many people assume chickens will naturally stay near the coop. Chickens however are not the brightest of animals, and it is possible for them to wander off. If you have a run added onto the coop, this will give your chickens a place to walk around and find insects and they will not be in any danger.

Be Sure To Have Air Flow When Building A Chicken Coop

Some people are so focused on having a sturdy and secure structure they forgot about ventilation. Ventilation does a couple things. It will keep your livestock from feeling stifled during the warmer months and fresh air blows away stagnant smells.

Keep Your Chicken Coop Close To Your Home

It may be tempting to have your coop further away on your property to present a less cluttered yard. However, you will be spending a fair amount of time feeding your chickens, gathering eggs, and performing maintenance on the coop. This means the closer the coop is to your home, the less labor you will expend. You will also be close if a predator like a fox or coyote is on the scene.

Building a Chicken Coop guide downloadChickens make for great livestock. They do not require a huge upkeep, need little space, and provide you with a great benefit. If you are raising chickens for the first time, be sure to follow this advice. Make sure raising chickens is legal where you live, especially if it happens to be an urban area.

Read through the plans for your chicken coop thoroughly before starting it. Make sure the coop is the right size for the amount of chickens you want to have. Raise the coop off the ground to protect against snakes and other predators. Include air holes for ventilation, which keeps the chickens cool and airs out the coop at the same time. If you have the coop closer to your home, you will save time because you will not have to travel as far for everyday chores. Building a chicken coop properly will mean less hassle and more rewards for you in the long run.

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DIY Chicken Coop Construction Tips to help make your chickens lay more eggs

Posted on April 18, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

Look at these two guides if you are interested in building your own chicken coop:

  1. Building A Chicken Coop
  2. Chicken DIY Guide

Video Transcription:

Welcome to the building a chicken coop podcast with Bob Keene.

Chicken coop construction tips

As you’re preparing for chicken coop construction to take place, there are some factors you should be considering to make sure you build the best chicken coop you can, allowing your chickens to feel safe, secure, and comfortable laying their eggs.  Many times individuals will overlook these chicken coop construction tips, which can then cause them issues down the road when they have to rework certain aspects of their coop since changes need to be made.  Here are some of the top chicken coop construction tips to keep in mind.

Watering location. One of the most important things with your chicken coop is that the chickens always have free access to water.  Be sure that you use a large waterer so that it will last the chickens throughout the day.  The closer the coop is to your main source of water, the better, since this will make your job of maintaining their watering supply a great deal easier.

Electricity.  Moving on, you also want to make sure that it’s possible to get electricity into your coop so you can provide light for the chickens during the evening hours.  This will be important if you want the chickens to continue to lay eggs throughout the entire year, so be sure it’s not something you overlook either.  Consider automatic food dispensing.  Just as the chickens need constant access to water, using an automatic food dispenser is also critical.  This will help ensure that they are easily able to get food when they need it, and will give you a bit more freedom on when you need to take time to feed them.  With the automatic food dispenser, if you happen to be leaving for the weekend, you can rest assured knowing the chickens will not go hungry.

Protection from the wind.  Most people consider the fact their chickens need a good amount of light and circulation.  However, many forget to consider the fact in windy climates, your chickens are also going to have to be protected.  For this reason, you may not want to have completely open windows on the coop, instead having them covered with some sort of plastic protective coating.  Even if you make this removable, it will still provide a barrier to the wind that you can easily put up if needed.

Food storage bins.  Another factor to consider with your chicken coop construction plans is what you plan to use for food storage purposes.  Some people will keep the chicken food in their garage or located somewhere else on their farm, but this can make for longer trips when it comes time for feeding them.  You’d be much better off building food storage bins close to the chicken coop, since this will then allow you easy access, speeding up the feeding process.  Just be sure you keep these food bins enclosed and protected from other animals who may try to get into them.

By incorporating these chicken coop construction tips into your overall plan, you will help maximize the usage you get from the coop, while keeping the time needed to maintain it minimal on your part.  If you’d like more chicken coop construction tips, please visit the following website, Building a Chicken Coop.

 

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Simple Chicken Coop Plans: Learn How To Easily Build A Chicken Coop Yourself

Posted on April 18, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

If you are interested in building your own chicken coop take a look at these two comprehensive guides:

  1. Building A Chicken Coop
  2. Chicken DIY Guide

Video Transcription:

Alright, welcome to a video on chicken coop plans.  When people need coops, this is what they build.  This is a quick little video I put together just to give you guys information as well as inspiration about building chicken coops.  This will just be a number of basic designs you can just look at that will inspire you or give you some ideas.

You can see a pretty straight forward chicken coop here, a slanted roof, a fence area, easy access for the owners, and very well protected from the outside weather.  Even though your chickens will be free-range, you still want them to be protected from predators, as well as the weather.

Here’s another design for a chicken coop.  You can see it’s raised up and off the ground.  Again, the fence is very well protected so the chickens are safe in there, but again, easy access for the owners to remove the eggs and get the chickens themselves.  Moving on to the next picture, here’s a different style.  Of course, you can have the fence around the chicken coop.  Hopefully that depends on the area, it can be bigger or smaller, depending on what you’re looking for.  It keeps the chickens protected, but also allows them to go in and out of the actual chicken coop itself.

Here’s another shot of the chicken coop we saw a couple slides of back at a different angle, to give you guys a better perspective of what this particular design looks like.  It’s slightly different from the previous slide of a similar design, but essentially the same.  Let’s move on to the next picture here.  Of course you’ve got the puppy outside.  He’d love to get a fresh meal there, but the dog cannot.  Of course, it’s fenced.  You can see that there’s a tarp bungee corded to the chicken coop there.  Again, just to be able to drop down when the weather’s a little more rough or severe.  That may be something that some of you that are watching this are thinking about.

This is a chicken coop design that is more along the lines of mobile, so if you want to move it to different positions on your property, you certainly can do so.  Again, it’s basically just building a chicken coop design on top of wheels, so that you can move it to where you need to move it, which can certainly come in handy.  It’s not a permanent structure, or at least semi-permanent.

Here is an inside shot of the chicken coop.  It gives you an idea of the internal structure of this particular design.  This, you can see, has certain elements that need to be part of the structure of your chicken coop, for those of you that are going to be building one that is prebuilt, or even one that is custom.  There’s another inside shot of the chicken coop.  This one basically just needs chickens in it.  You can see very simply how it’s laid out, compartmentalized, and whatnot.  Very straight forward.  You’ll notice any fabrication of putting together these chicken coops is not overly difficult.

Here’s a great shot of that, very simple structure.  Again, it depends whether you’re getting something that’s prebuilt, or if you’re going to be building this yourself.  Of course, here’s the final picture of a little girl on top of the chicken coop, and hey, if she can do it, we can all do it, right?  You know, when you scour the internet you’re sure to stumble upon a number of different designs.

I do have a guide that I recommend, in terms of assisting you in building a chicken coop, so if you are interested in getting a bit more information in terms of putting together a chicken coop, keeping everything really simple, and following step-by-step instruction, simply visit the website in the description box below this video.  Thanks for watching, and all the best in building your next chicken coop.

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Free DIY Chicken Coop Designs You Can Steal and Copy

Posted on April 18, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

Here are 2 websites we found that offer the best chicken coop plans:

  1. Building A Chicken Coop
  2. Chicken DIY Guide

Video Transcription:

Welcome to a video on chicken coop designs.  Feel free to steal and copy these designs for yourself.  As I go through this slideshow of different designs that you can take and use for yourself, I’m just going to touch on four basic tips for not only choosing, but also designing your chicken coop.

The first one is obviously easy cleaning, as you can see from the design that’s on the video right now.  Simple, it’s very simple, and that’s what you’re looking for.  If the blueprint for the design you may be considering for your chickens is too difficult to clean, that can spell disaster, so you’re going to want to make sure that you look at the floor and make sure that there’s a downward slope, make sure that there’s proper runoff, there’s proper drainage.  Also make sure that the main door that gives you access to the chicken coop opens inward, okay?  The first tip is easy cleaning.

The second tip is going to be centered around ventilation, and having proper ventilation is absolutely essential.  That ties into making sure the windows and door are easy to open.  Depending on how many windows and doors, they’re all easy to slide open.  Ventilation is absolutely key.  You can see in this particular design on the video right now, there’s ventilation at the very top of this chicken coop as well.  So you want to make sure everything is flowing and working properly in terms of airflow and keeping the whole place ventilated properly.

The third thing to look for in designing your chicken coop is lighting.  You’ve got two choices: fluorescent and electric.  The great thing about it is it will also keep the chickens warm, especially on cooler days, or in the cooler seasons, whether it’s fall, winter, or early spring.  It’s another heat source, so it’s important it’s done right.

The fourth and final tip is just making sure that you use proper quality construction material.  That goes for everything, from of course the wood that you use, to the wire mesh that’s used in the design, making sure that it’s good quality wood.  Because you’re not going to want it to fall apart.  I know a lot of these tips are very, very simple.  There’s many more to consider, but these are four essentials that really have to be there.

I touched on the wire mesh there a second ago.  One of the reasons to make sure you have strong enough wire mesh is for preditors, because if a predator’s able to get into the chicken coop and whatnot, obviously that’s going to spell disaster because they’re going to get at the chickens. If you at least follow these four basic designs, and use them in considering designs for a chicken coop, you’re going to be heading and staying in the right direction.

For more essential tips, directions, and guidance in terms of actual designs that are properly done and step-by-step instruction to actually do it yourself and build chicken coops, what you can do is just underneath this video is an actual description of box, and you’re going to want to just take a look at that website there.  It may be the ticket that you’re looking for.  If you do want more information about chicken coop designs, just simply visit that website now, and thanks for watching this video.

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13 Steps To Building A Chicken Coop Video

Posted on April 18, 2012 by ChickenCoopPlans

Build Your Own Chicken Coop

Video Transcription:

How To Build A Chicken Coop

A chicken coop provides shelter for your chickens and gives them a place where they can lay their eggs. This coop comfortably fits four chickens.

You will need:

  • 

two six-foot, two by two inch pre-drilled boards
  • Six three-foot, two by two inch PD boards
  • 
Six four-foot, two by two inch PD boards
  • Two two-foot, two by two inch PD boards
  • Two three-foot, two by four inch PD boards
  • Two eight-foot, two by four inch PD boards
  • And eight by four foot piece of ply wood.
  • A nine by four foot piece of siding.
  • Scrap wood
  • 
screws
  • 
two barrel bolts
  • 
a drill
  • staples
  • a circular saw
  • 
a staple gun
  • chicken wire or metal mesh
  • plastic roofing and six hinges.

Step 1: Build a six by three foot base for the coop by constructing a frame. Screw two three foot, two by four boards across the ends of two parallel eight foot two by fours, about a foot in from the ends. If you need to make the coop larger, consider how many chickens you plan to house. A good method is to add three to six square feet per chicken.

Step 2: Construct a frame for the side wall by screwing two four-foot two by two’s perpendicularly to the ends of the base frame, a foot in from the front and back. Screw in a third four-foot two by two between the first two, four feet behind the front post. Now screw with six-foot two by two across the tops of the post to finish off the wall. Build another identical frame for the opposite wall of the coop.

Step 3: Construct a front and back wall by screwing three foot two by two’s across the tops of both side walls at the front and back. Screw another three-foot two by two across the center of the front wall. This will the outside roost support.

Step 4: Wrap and staple chicken wire to the front wall as well as to the front four foot sections of the side walls.

Step 5: At the same height that you’ve attached the roof’s support to the front wall, construct a square frame within the unwired back area of the coop by screwing three-foot two by two’s across the insides of the rear upright boards and across the insides of the upright boards that will frame the front wall of the hen house. Screw two foot two by two’s across the insides of the two unwired side walls in line with the other boards you just attached. Now the outside roost to the support on the front wall attaching the other end to the hen house frame.

Step 6: Use the plywood to make a floor for the hen house across the square frame screwing the plywood to the frame. Construct an identical rectangular ringer boards at the top of the upright two by two’s, this will support the roof of the hen house.

Step 7: Build a nesting box using the remaining plywood. The box should be about one cubic foot. Leave the front side open and place the box so that the open side faces and rests up against one wall of the hen house. At a raised level, mount a two by two or piece of scrap wood across the center of the hen house to serve as an indoor roost.

Step 8: Use the circular saw to cut a piece of siding to completely cover the wall opposite the nesting box. Cut the section in half vertically then make another vertical cut, one and a half inches in from the edges of each half to make a hinge line on each side.

Step 9: Screw two hinges across the left hinge line and two across the right hinge line about five inches from the bottoms and tops of the doors. On the back of the right door, screw a door catch to the inside edge shorter than the length of the door so that it sticks out about an inch. Screw the double door to the coop frame. On the top and bottom of the right door, attach barrel bolts, screwing the bolt catchers to the frame.

Step 10: Cut a piece of siding to fit the wall adjacent to the nesting box. Make cuts for a rectangular egg door in the middle of the siding starting eight inches in from each side and four inches from the top. Remove the door piece, slip the door frame over and screw door catches around the inside edges of the door holes so they stick out about half an inch.

Step 11: Replace the door piece in the hole and screw two hinges across the hinge line on one side of the door then screw a barrel bolt onto the other side of the door attaching the bolt cached to the door panel. Screw the egg door wall to the coop frame.

Step 12: Cut and attach to the frame a piece of siding to fit the back wall running from the ground to the roof. Cut a section of siding to cover the wall facing the open air area of the coop. Cut a square foot hole to serve as an entrance into the hen house. Using extra plywood or scrap wood, attach a ramp that will run from the entrance to the ground.

Step 13: Wire and staple the top of the coop as well as the area underneath the hen house without siding. Attach the plastic roofing over the hen house making sure you place it at a slant so that water will run off toward the back. You will be eating fresh eggs for breakfast in no time.

Want more detailed, step-by-step plans for building a chicken coop? Check out Bill Keene’s Building a Chicken Coop AND Chicken DIY Guide for more info.

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