Making a chicken coop

[AVR0VULCAN]

Hi guys! I'm going to be making a chicken coop soon, but I don't know what to do for the design. Can you guys recommend any designs for my chicken coop?
Thanks.

 

[DobieLover]

Hi guys! I'm going to be making a chicken coop soon, but I don't know what to do for the design. Can you guys recommend any designs for my chicken coop?
Thanks.

There are probably 1000's of coop designs on this site.
First determine the max number of birds you plan to keep, consider your year round climate, budget, building skills, how you plan to manage your flock, etc. and start reading and taking notes.

 

[AVR0VULCAN]

There are probably 1000's of coop designs on this site.
First determine the max number of birds you plan to keep, consider your year round climate, budget, building skills, how you plan to manage your flock, etc. and start reading and taking notes.

OK, thanks

 

[BleuSaphir]

I would look at how many you want to keep, and scout for a spot where you want the coop to be. Plan how much space they need for total birds and start drafting for designs.
This site has many coop design featured on it special page. You could look through many design for inspiration.

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC.

It's great that you're doing your research first and asking for recommendations instead of jumping in head first and buying one of those tiny, ill-ventilated, shoddily-build prefabs.

To give you better advice we'll need to know how many chickens you're planning on having, what level of building skills you have, and where, in general, you're located. Climate matters, especially when building a coop.

In general, each adult, standard-sized hen needs:

4 square feet in the coop,
10 square feet in the run,
1 linear foot of roost,
1/4 of a nest box,
and 1 square foot of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation, preferably located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on their roost.

Some rules of thumb:

• If it looks like a dollhouse it's only suitable for toy chickens.
• If it's measured in inches instead of feet it's too small.
• If your walk-in closet is larger than the coop-run combo you're thinking of buying think carefully about whether you have an utterly awesome closet or are looking at a seriously undersized chicken coop.
• If it has more nestboxes than the number of chickens it can legitimately hold the designer knew nothing about chickens' actual needs and it probably has other design flaws too.

Good luck!

P.S. If you click the "My Coop" link in people's profiles you can see what our coops look like.