One of the biggest mistakes to avoid when building a chicken coop is not planning. Planning is absolutely critical and you should complete this well and truly before you even lift a hammer!

Planning involves identifying how many chickens you wish to keep and how big you need to build your coop. Planning also involves determining the location of your coop and considering the weather and pest elements to ensure your chickens are well protected.

Planning your coop well entails identifying the best design and ensuring your chickens needs are met for their roosting, nesting and feeding habits.

Taking the time to plan your coop properly will ensure you have a great coop that provides a healthy and safe environment for your chickens.

How big your build your coop will depend on how many chickens you want to keep and the size of the area you have to keep your coop.

So the 3 tasks and decisions you have to make are:

1. Decide how many chickens you want to keep – perhaps work out how many eggs you want a day!
2. Calculate the size of the area you need per below
3. Check in to ensure your coop size will fit into the area you plan to build your coop.

If the size does not work, then you may need to adjust your size by a few chickens.

As a minimum you should allow at least 3 sq foot per chicken inside the coop and 10 sq foot outside in the chicken run, although I have allowed 4 sq foot per chicken and 10 sq foot in my chicken run. If chickens have the ability to roam outside of a chicken run and scratch around in a garden, they will benefit hugely from this as well. Chickens like space.

Make sure chickens have sufficient room to roost as well. Chickens prefer to roost above ground as this is their natural instinct to avoid predators. They prefer to roost together as it gives them as a sense of security and warmth, so be sure to give them around a foot each on a wooden roost.

These should be kept at the same level otherwise the chickens will jostle for the higher roosts. Chickens do around 50% of their poop at night so be sure to place poop trays under the roosts as this will make it easier to clean and re-use the manure. The roosts themselves should be secured and sufficiently wide enough the chickens don’t fall off at night.

So, once you have worked out how many chickens you want to keep, calculated the size the coop and chicken run should be you will be ready to starting building your coop.

Here a few tips for building Nesting Boxes and also how to encourage your chickens to use them as we found ours for a while preferred to nest under bushes.

Here a few tips for building Nesting Boxes and also how to encourage your chickens to use them as we found ours for a while preferred to nest under bushes.

1. You can build your nesting boxes quite simply from an old crate, or even a drawer from an old set of drawers
2. Make sure that you have at least one nesting box per 4 chickens.
3. Ensure that you build your nesting boxes are located in a dark, private corner in your coop
4. Make sure the nesting boxes are comfortable for your chickens to encourage them to lay their eggs. I usually put wood shavings underneath with some straw on top. Make sure the straw is fresh and not dusty.
5. Most chickens lay their eggs firs thing in the morning, so by keeping them confined to their coop and run first thing you will be encouraging your chickens to use the nesting boxes.
6. A reader on this site recommended putting a small roost in front of the nesting box so give it a go!