A chicken coop is a place perfectly enabled for chickens to live, which can be raised to lay eggs and enjoy them in a respectful way with the inhabitants.
It may be that for some reason you have gotten some chickens to raise, either by inheritance, by gifts or that you have simply decided to buy them. A hen obviously cannot get into the house; therefore, you need to build a chicken coop perfectly equipped for this task.
The bad thing is that if it is the first time you are dealing with farm animals, you may not know very well how to build a chicken coop, since it is not something that we are precisely taught in school.
A chicken coop should have everything necessary for raising hens, that is, a place for them to eat, a cage so that they do not escape, enough space for them to live well and must be placed stably in your garden or farm, to prevent them from falling.
It must also be composed of more or less resistant materials, since otherwise it will fall to nothing that rains, snow or there is some meteorological catastrophe. The good news is that it is not too expensive to build a homemade chicken coop and not too laborious, because with basic DIY knowledge, anyone can build their own chicken coop in an easy and fast way.
From doncomos.com and its home section, we will teach you step by step how to build your own place of raising hens, so you can start raising your own hens in a healthy and natural way.
What do you need to make a chicken coop?
- A place to build a chicken coop, such as a farm or a garden.
- Hens.
- A latch.
- Straw.
- A chain mail for the cage.
- Knowledge of architecture or hiring an architect.
- Wood.
- Screws and drill.
- Basic knowledge of DIY.
Instructions for making a chicken coop
- Design of the plans of the chicken coop:
When designing the plans, several things must be taken into account. The first thing is that we must take into account the number of hens we have, since it is not the same to make a chicken coop for two hens than to do it for 28 hens, therefore, it is the first thing we must take into account. Then you have to put in the chicken coop everything necessary for the hens to be healthy, such as an area with straw for eggs, a place enabled for food, windows to ventilate and some cleaning system in which we can clean the chicken coop perfectly. Once we have the plan designed (better by an architect), bounded and is a realistic design, we can start building. - Building the chicken coop:
Once we have it designed, it is time to start building our chicken coop, which must be perfectly adapted to what we have put on the plan. Normally the walls and roof are built simply with wood, as if it were a closet, so take the wooden planks, drill and screws and get to work. The roof must be made triangular, so that rainwater filters, we can use tiles but with wood it will be more than enough. Inside we are going to build the areas enabled for the hens, separating the chicken coop into sections, one for the nests and another for the food. If you have many hens, divide the zones into partitions, one for each hen. Also try to make some kind of door so that the hens can enter and leave (with latch if you do not want them to leave when they do not want them to leave) and some adapted place so that you can enter to clean. - Extra areas:
If you have space in the garden, you can enable a cage next to the chicken coop, so that the hens go out to take the air and do not escape. There you can enable an area to feed the chickens and to run around. You can also make some kind of extra decoration for your chicken coop, such as putting a part with sheet metal so that it does not get cold, or painting it to make it more beautiful.
Tips for making a chicken coop
- Buy a chicken coop: If you are not good with DIY or have tried tutorials like this and have not been able to with them, do not despair, because for a relatively cheap price, you can buy a chicken coop already built, which will be ready for use without having to do anything more than transport it. The price is higher than that of the chicken coop that you can make yourself, however, you are also guaranteeing that everything will go well and that there is no accident. I recommend buying a chicken coop to those who do not want to risk doing the DIY work wrong.