Saucy Pet

If you are new to keeping chickens, or you want to get more chickens, building your chicken coop yourself is an excellent way to make savings. Ready made chicken coops can cost several hundred pounds and building a chicken coop is easy if you have good plans.

It’s a great family project too. 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.

You do need to establish what sort of design will suit you and your flock. 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. A chicken ark is a simple triangular shape with a nest box and roosting space at one end and a run at the other. Building a chicken ark is a simple project that would take a day.

For less than two days work you should be able to build the larger hen house – it is still easy. 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.

More hens will need a larger chicken coop. 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.

To future-proof your investment, buy a set of plans that includes all three designs. Then you’re all set to really save money.

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