Build a Chicken Coop Yourself – For Credit Crunch Chicken Keeping
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.
Your children will enjoy getting involved. 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.
Decide at the outset what design of chicken coop would be right for you. 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 moved each day so the chickens get fresh ground to graze, or you can leave them in one place and let the chickens out. 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.
If you’re going for a larger hen house, you’ll find it takes a bit longer, but it isn’t really any more complicated. This is perfect for five or six chickens. 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.
If you have, or plan to have, a larger flock then you will need a bigger hen house. 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 save costs even further, source some plans that include instructions and plans for building all three types of chicken coop. Then you’re all set to really save money.
