Build a Chicken Coop Yourself - For Credit Crunch Chicken Keeping

Whether you’re getting your first few chickens, or need a new or bigger chicken house, building a chicken coop yourself will give you big savings. Ready made chicken coops can cost several hundred pounds and building a chicken coop is easy if you have good plans.

Your children will enjoy getting involved. Depending on the ages of your children, they will be able to help building the chicken coop by doing something: fetching and organising the materials, telling you what to do next, assembling some of the pieces or even building the entire chicken coop.

The first thing to decide is what kind of chicken coop is right for you. If you only have, or are planning to get, a few hens, say around three, then a chicken ark could be a good solution.

Chicken arks can be static and the chickens let out each day, or you can move the ark and keep the chickens in. The chicken ark design has a covered space with a floor for nesting and roosting with a run at the other end. Building a chicken ark is a simple project that would take a day.

To buld a fixed hen house will probably take you most of a weekend - but it’s an straightforward shape so still very easy to build. For five to seven hens this is ideal. You could even build both, so you have the chicken ark to move the hens around and to use if any of them are poorly.

You’ll need a bigger hen house for a larger flock. A pitched roof design with external nest boxes would be perfect and you could site it within a run if you are not able to let your chickens free range.

If you want to save even more, find plans that have all three chicken coop designs. Then you’re all set to really save money.