The experience of raising your own chickens on your own property is a great one especially if you have young children that you can involve in the process. I know chickens will not be everybody's first choice in pet but they really do make a quite amusing member of the family. With raising chickens comes the responsibility of housing the chickens and keeping them safe. You can go out to your local store and purchase a chicken coop if you have say five hundred dollars spare but most of us these days will find that much to expensive.

So what is the alternative? you can't keep the chickens inside your house ( believe me - I tried! ). Currently on the market there is a number of high quality chicken coop designs that will help you in building a chicken coop. By building your own chicken coop you will save approximately fifty percent of the cost of buying a coop. This is mainly because the materials needed for building your own chicken coop are very low cost - most of the wood can be found lying around your garden shed. The tools needed can be found in any of your mates toolboxes.

First point you should consider is how many chickens you are planning on keeping inside the chicken coop. As a general rule of thumb there should be four square feet of space for each chicken. If the chickens do not have the required amount of space they will become unhealthy and their egg production will decrease. Another big point to cover when it comes to the health of your chickens is the amount of natural daylight they are getting. Chickens sleep at night and are awake in the daytime and they need this cycle to produce healthy eggs. Always position your chicken coop in the area of your garden or yard that receives the most daylight.

Chickens are considered farmyard animals so there is a certain amount of mess and odor they will produce. Ventilation of the chicken coop is very important to combat this and keep the birds healthy. Choosing chicken coop plans which include windows will help aid the ventilation needed. Make sure the windows are not to large in size as you do not want to have predators visiting your chickens through the windows at night.

You do not need to be a carpenter or qualified tradesman when it comes to building a chicken coop. By choosing the right plans with an easy to follow system your chicken coop should be up and running in no time.