At first, building chicken coops seems like a very daunting task. It doesn’t have to be that way if you start with a plan. I know we have all heard of breaking a big task down into bite sized chunks.

Well, let’s do that!

The first step is to figure out how big you need your chicken coop to be. Will you just raise a couple of chickens for the eggs or are you going to want to grow your brood over time? When building chicken coops this is an important factor. If you just want to raise a few chickens for egg production, then the A-Frame or catawba coop will do fine. This style of chicken coop has the nesting area in the peak and the chicken run at the bottom. If you are going to grow your brood over time a regular eight foot by eight foot hen house with the chicken run extending out from it will do fine.

The second step when building chicken coops is to layout your design. You can buy chicken coop designs online rather cheaply. If you want to design your own chicken coop you can use a cad program or a graphics program will work too. A sheet of graph paper will do just fine if you don’t use computers much. The graph paper will help you get your dimensions right.

The third step for building chicken coops is to figure out how much material you will need.

1. Two by fours for framing. Do want to space the walls at sixteen inches or twenty-four inches? At sixteen inches you will need more two by fours.

2. Plywood for decking and walls. If you are building the A-Frame or catawba coop you will only need enough for the nesting area. You can use plywood for the nesting boxes or recycled material.

3. Roofing material. Decide if you want a shingle or tin for the roof.

4.

Chicken wire. You can use the heavier rabbit wire if predators pose a problem.

5. Hinges for the doors, windows, ventilation flaps and access to the chicken run.

6. Posts for your chicken run. You can use four by four posts or metal fence posts. Which ever is cheapest.

Tools needed for building chicken coops are basic. Hammer, nails, tape measure and saw. Note that some supply stores will cut your lumber to size for you so you won’t need a saw and it saves time.

The fourth step is to separate the lumber and follow your design. Building chicken coops can be easy when you follow a plan and break it down.

Building chicken coops aren’t that hard and can be fun. You can get plans and designs for building chicken coops here

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