Finding the Best Plans for Building a Chicken Coop

I am finding that many people are passionate about keeping chickens and want to know about building a hen coop. This leads to questions about where to find the best chicken coop plans on the internet. So we have done some research to try and help.

There are many offers of chicken coop plans on the internet, but which of these will result in a good-quality working chicken house? If you know all about chickens and how to design happy and healthy housing for them, are good at preplanning, making your own blueprints from basic plans or diagrams, producing a comprehensive materials list before starting to put your hen house together, as well as being an experienced carpenter, then you will probably manage with any type of chicken coop plans you unearth.

Or you might discover how much time and money you have wasted, and you could actually design and build a hen house that might be dangerous or unhealthy for your birds. Careful, accurate planning and proper blueprints are vital to making a good chicken coop.

Proper planning for making a good hen house will include at least:

• Selecting a suitable location for the chicken coop in your backyard or garden

• Calculating the right size of chicken coop for the number of hens

• Ensuring adequate lighting and ventilation for the birds

• Designing the nesting box and feeder arrangements

• Ensuring adequate safeguards from predators

• Considering any services to the chicken coop such as electricity and water supplies

Most people will need expert advice and guidance to do this planning thoroughly, and will rely on good blueprints rather than sketchy plans and vague layout drawings to build a proper hen house. Unless you use clear and accurate blueprints it is pretty certain that you will not achieve a good functional chicken coop, it might not be strong enough and it might let predators in.

If you take a casual approach to chicken coop plans you will end up wasting both time and money, your enthusiasm will take a dive and – perhaps most importantly – you will not enjoy the experience as much as you should. Also, unhappy or unhealthy hens are poor layers, so you will be denied those lovely free-range eggs you had so eagerly anticipated.

Before starting to make the chicken coop you will need to prepare a comprehensive list of materials needed for the job. This is very important, otherwise you will come up against inevitable problems during the build when you discover you have overlooked some bracket or other and your local hardware shop has already closed! Making a comprehensive materials list is quite difficult to do properly, and we really recommend that you let a chicken coop expert do it on your behalf.

It is so easy to make mistakes without this expert input. Often these mistakes will not become apparent until you have completed the hen house, and by then it could be too late to rectify any problems. It is certainly worth investing a few dollars to get professional advice and tips along the way, and usually these come complete with clear step-by-step instructions and schematic diagrams. In our experience we have found that good plans and instructions actually save the builder money overall because he does the job properly in the first place.

We have found and strongly recommend a man who has many years’ experience with chickens, Bill Keene. He can supply a good collection of chicken coop plans, including all the necessary information, step-by-step instructions, drawings, blueprints, material lists and professional guidance for you to plan and build a hen house that will be exactly the way you wanted it. He will help you avoid all those common errors made by beginners, and also show you how to produce a happy, safe and healthy living area for your birds. Bill Keene is the best source of good plans for making a wonderful chicken coop.