You can find many chicken coop plans advertised online, but how will you be able to find the ones which will produce a good working hen house? Provided that you are knowledgeable about how to keep hens, are good at detailed planning, drawing your own blueprints from basic plans or diagrams, producing a detailed list of materials before starting to assemble your chicken coop, as well as being an experienced carpenter, then you will probably get by with any type of chicken coop plans you unearth.

Or you might discover how much time and money you have wasted, and you could end up making a chicken house that proved to be a very unhappy and unsafe environment for your birds. Careful, accurate planning and proper blueprints are vital to building a good chicken coop.

As a minimum you should include the following in your planning:

• Selecting a suitable location for the chicken coop in your yard or garden

• Calculating the correct size of chicken house for the number of hens

• Ensuring there is adequate ventilation and lighting in the coop

• Choosing the layout and type of feeders and nesting boxes

• Designing adequate safeguards from predators

• Considering any services to the chicken coop such as electricity and water supplies

In practice most people will need some help from chicken experts to do this planning completely, and will depend on accurate blueprints rather than sketches and vague diagrams to build a proper hen house. Without good blueprints it is quite likely that you will not achieve a good functional chicken coop, it might not be strong enough and it might let predators in.

You will definitely waste time and money (in wrong materials and get-around fixes) if you take a trial-and-error approach, your enthusiasm will take a dive and – perhaps most importantly – you will not get the enjoyment and satisfaction you should be getting. In addition, unhappy or unhealthy hens are poor layers, so you will be denied those lovely free-range eggs you had so eagerly anticipated.

Before starting to make the chicken coop you will need to prepare a comprehensive list of materials needed for the job. This is vital, otherwise you will certainly encounter stoppages during the assembly when you discover you have missed some bracket or fastener and the local hardware shop has already closed! It is not easy to put together a comprehensive list of all necessary materials, and we can honestly say that it is so much better (and safer) to let a chicken coop expert do it for you.

It is so easy to make mistakes without this expert input. Often these will not become obvious until you have finished, and by then it could be too late to rectify any problems. It is certainly sensible to invest in good-quality chicken coop plans, and usually these come complete with clear step-by-step instructions and schematic diagrams. In our experience we have found that good plans and instructions actually save the builder money overall because he does the job properly in the first place.

We have located and highly recommend a lady who has many years’ experience with chickens, Mary Nelson. She can supply the best chicken coop plans, in our opinion, including all the necessary information, step-by-step instructions, drawings, blueprints, material lists and professional guidance for you to plan and make a chicken coop that will be exactly the way you wanted it. She will ensure you do not make all the usual first-time mistakes, and also show you how to produce a happy, safe and healthy living area for your hens.  In our opinion, Mary is the best source for hen house designs.

Good luck and have fun!

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