If you have seen a lot of chicken coops reviews but still can’t choose the best one for you, or simply you are limit in the budget, let’s thinking about building a chicken coop by yourself.
Don’t worry if you cannot read the chicken coop plants since they too technical or you are not a kind of skillful person. Your chickens do not care about if the corners are square or not, they also do not need a pretty coop. All the requirements of your chickens are the sheltered place, dry, keeps them safe and warm.
With basic woodworking skills and an easy-understand plan with the most essential things for chicken, building a chicken coop is not really hard.
What are the features that a DIY coop should have?
Whatever types of coop you are plan to build, it needs to contain these essential factors below:
Enough space for your chicken comfortably eat, sleep and some other activities.
Protect your chickens with the best chicken predator deterrent.
Ventilation.
Airtight.
Easy to clean, sanitize with great drainage.
How big should your coop be?
The size of your coop is dependent mostly on what types of chickens you have. Basically, if you plant to coop them all the time, they will need at least 10 feet square per chicken. But if they are allowed to outdoor, each bantam requires at least 2 feet square; the standard large fowl will need 4 feet square in a coop per one.
There is one notice that those things up to here are minimum space requirements per bird. If the conditions permit, it is always better to build a bigger chicken coop. You won’t know if at some point you will get more chicken than you can imagine at the moment.
How do you create good ventilation?
Ventilation plays an important role in building a chicken coop. In the summer, the hot air will be pushed out of the coop by the vents, keep the coop cooler. In the winter, it maintains the warm air and pushes moist stale air out.
You should place the vent up near the ceiling, above the chicken heads.
If you are living in colder zones, with each 10 feet square of the floor, it will require a feet square of the vent. In the warmer zones, you will need to create more vent to maintain the coop temperatures.