Hey April, good luck with the hatch
What sounds like such an easy request is actually gigantic
It depends on the lay of your land, your predator risk or lack thereof, your location, your climate, your susceptibility to chicken math resulting in you having way more than 4-5
Etc Etc
Being in a tropical area of Aus with high humidity and torrential rain, we went for a raised coop with a slatted timber floor for added ventilation. This is not going to work somewhere where it snows.
I reckon a good place to start is the
Coop & Run Forum and if you have not popped in to your local state thread and said hello as yet, you might want to
Find Your State Thread as those folks will be able to advise you with regards climate, predators etc.
The
Learning Centre also has a section on Housing & Feeding Your Chickens with links to some good ideas and coop pages etc.
Oh yeah, general rule of thumb, each large chicken requires 4 square foot of coop space, 10 square foot of run space and 2 foot of roost space. If you go down the kit coop path [not recommended] halve the amount of chickens it is advertised to accommodate. If it say 10 chickens it is most likely suitable for 5 max!
Oh and one last tip, chicken wire is good for keeping chickens in but not for keeping predators out so steer clear of it if you can.
Good luck.
