How to Build A Chicken Coop. Design & Innovation.

Earlier this year, I built a backyard chicken coop.  The coop can hold as many as ten chickens, but we have just five at this point.  That’s plenty…It’s pretty much kept us in eggs since the summer.  While tomorrow’s post will discuss construction, I want to focus on the design features in today’s post.  So here goes...

• Shape of Coop – the coop is designed with a window at the top and bottom of the coop and an unusual shape with two roof lines.  The shape and window placement create a high degree of air circulation.  This is important because chickens perspire through their mouths like dogs do when they pant.  By properly venting the coop you prevent the build of of excessive moisture that can make your chickens sick.  The concept of this shape is taken from “Fresh Air Poultry Houses” published in 1924.  I estimated dimensions for my coop by looking at a picture in the book and then scaling them to a smaller size.

• Floor Pan For Cleaning – As far as I can tell, this is a design feature that is wholly of my invention.  It allows me to easily clean the coop by opening a small door in the front of the coop and removing a floor pan.  I normally put straw on the pan, so cleaning is just dumping out the old straw, hosing down the pan, putting the pan back in the coop and adding some new straw.

• External Access to Nest Boxes – The nest boxes are located on the inside the coop and are accessible from the outside by opening a small door on the left side of the coop.  This makes egg collection a breeze.

• Good Ground Clearance – I built the coop one foot off the ground.  This keeps the chickens warmer since cold air settles closest to the earth and also keeps rodents out by raising the total structure off the ground.

• Back Door Access- The back of the coop is essentially one big door that hangs on pegs.  This makes weekly cleaning easy and if I need to spray the coop for mites or other nasties, I can readily get inside the coop with a sprayer.

Photos with design details shown can be seen at my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/45934064@N00/sets/72157623179367425/

 
 


 

Comments

[Juliana Zigler]

thanks for the article.. I like the plan view #1 . Now I understand more how to build a chicken coop!

[H. Mark Delman]

Hi Juliana:

Glad I could help. Let me know if you have other questions and good luck with your own chicken coop.

-Mark