How To Build A Chicken Coop

Raising and owning chickens can be such a fulfilling thing to do! We first got interested in it after my brother-in-law had his chickens for a few years. He’s always consistently produced some of the best-tasting eggs we’d ever had. Also, not that we’re doomsday preppers or anything, but we wanted a little bit more self-sufficiency. We knew where we were, and we knew where we wanted to be. We just had to build a plan to get there. The first step was to build or buy a chicken coop.

Build or Buy

We decided to build a chicken coop with a plan we found online. Although in the future if/when we need another coop, I think we’re just gonna pay for one. The one we built is great! It’s super big and can hold a lot of birds. It’s really sturdy and strong, and I have no doubt it will be able to withstand any weather that’s thrown its way. With the coop we built, our chickens will be completely safe and have plenty of room.

HOWEVER, it was a TON of work, it’s really heavy and hard to move, the supplies and plans still cost a lot, more than half the price if we had just bought a pre-made coop. You can make a coop in all sorts of ways, and maybe you can make it with less effort. But with any kind of DIY chicken coop there’s going to be a lot more work.

Why didn’t we just buy one outright? The ones we could find seemed pretty frail. Not that a strong gust of wind would blow it over, but that we’d need to replace it in less than 5 years. And for a pretty high price, I expected better. So that’s why we got plans and lumber and built it ourselves. 

Like I said, there are a ton of different ways to build a coop. The way we did it was a big ol’ coop on 4 legs to raise it off the ground. The plans were great about what to do and when, and with what parts, cut to what lengths and angles. The first thing we made was the base. It had 4×4 legs that were reinforced. Next were the walls. We had to make 2 cutouts for windows on opposite sides, figure out where the outside walls were going to open to clean it out, and decide where the actual nesting boxes would go. Luckily I didn’t have to decide any of that, we just had to follow what the plan said. Here are some pictures we took during the build process.

The windows both have slides for shutting them closed, and we used corrugated metal for the roofs. It was very easy to get some self-tapping screws to secure them in place, then an angle grinder to cut it off where we wanted. After that was all done, we painted it with some strong, durable outdoor paint, and butted it up right next to our pen. The door on the coop for letting the chickens in and out is right next to the fence, which we cut a square in and secured the edges to the coop so no animals could sneak in there.

It was a heavy sucker. We (I mean my husband) built it at my brother-in-law’s house and had to trailer it to our house. Then we had to borrow Andrew’s dad’s tractor to pull it off the trailer and drag it close to where we wanted it. Then we just had to wait for our next family gathering, where we could convince a few people to help us move the last few feet by hand. 

We learned a lot about the function of coops, but I’d rather pay more for a pre-built one in the future than go through that again. Once March rolled around, we got our chicks and started raising them. But that story will be in a separate post!