Thinking of raising chickens in your backyard? searching for chicken plans? Looking for a supply of fresh organic eggs delivered into your garden every morning? Raising and housing chickens has now become a much easier task than it used to be. You can pop out to a local store and purchase a ready made chicken coop but can you really afford to pay upwards of four hundred dollars for a coop. What most people are tending to do these days is buy some chicken coop plans and build their own housing.

There are obvious benefits to this namely the price - building your own chicken coop will cost you only half the price of buying a new one. Also, if you build your own coop you will get your chance to put your own personal touches to it. Buying a ready made coop will lumber you with someone else's design touches. So, how many chickens do you intend to raise and coop? This is a question you must ask yourself straight away before picking up a hammer. The number of chickens you want to keep will determine the chicken coop plans you choose. As a rule of thumb you should give each chicken four square feet of space.

The inside of your chicken coop will need some designing and planning to. Pick a corner of the coop and use that exclusively as your feeder and watering area ( keep it in one area as the chickens will tend to make a lot of mess around their eating areas ). Also, choose a medium to cover the chicken floor - most people choose between wood chips or straw. This medium will help make things easier when it comes to frequently cleaning out your chicken coop.

Placement of your chicken coop will be paramount on the overall health and well-being of your birds. Try to pick a spot in your garden that gets the most natural daylight. Chickens, like us, need to sleep at night and be awake in the daytime hours. Lack of this light cycle will cause poor health leading to poor egg yield. You can also combat this by installing a couple of chicken coop lights up high in the coop ( these lights will also give off a certain amount of heat at winter time.

You do not have to be a qualified carpenter to build a chicken coop - the chicken house designs that are found on the internet today are easy enough to follow. Choose the plans that will suit your needs and crack on with your project.