How To: Build a Chicken Coop

There are a lot of great ideas for building your own chicken coop from the back of a car, to an enclosed coop with a garden area, from modern to traditional. This blog addresses the most basic coop. This is a Saturday project. Ours took about 8 hours, but we spent a lot of time working out the kinks and taking photos for this blog. If we could do it all over again, we would probably make a coop that you could stand up in. If you can stand up in it, you are more likely to keep it clean.

Materials needed:

• 5 pieces of 4'x8' plywood. We used 15/32 cdx, you can use thicker - just keep in mind that you may have to lift it.

• 3 4'x1" dowels

• 12 8 foot 1x2s. Again, you can use 2x4s if you would rather. These worked great for our purposes.

• 200+ wood screws. Make sure you get enough and that you don't have to send someone to get more for you (true story)

• 2 smaller fixed pin utility hinges (for coop door)

• 4 larger fixed pin utility hinges (for back door)

• 5 hook & eye (one for holding the coop door open, two for keeping it closed at night, two for keeping the back door closed)

Tools:

• Yard stick

• Gloves

• Circular saw

• Safety glasses

• Jigsaw

• Drill

• Pencil

• Drill bits

• Tape measure

Click here for step-by-step instructions

#howto #chickencoop #chickens #chicks