Thursday, May 21, 2009

Design sources for urban chicken coops

Got an email from someone last night asking where he might get designs for building a coop in his backyard. I'm sharing my response here as I think there might be others asking the same thing.

There are lots of sources for coop design out there, depending on how handy you are with a hammer and nails and whether you need explicit step-by-step instructions or simply a book of inspirational pictures you can create your own plans from.
  1. The Garden Coop -- Step-by-step detailed plans available for download. John Carr's put together a really useful design and done a great job making it accessible to those of us (like me) who have a lot of enthusiasm but not a lot of practice building structures.
  2. BackyardChickens.com Coop Design Gallery -- An online gallery that displays the myriad types of coops owned by the community of backyard/urban chicken owners. The individual coops you'll see range from small to huge, from plain to fancy and from cheap to expensive. The amount of detail behind each coop varies. Some have dimensions and as-we-built-it photo documentation. Others are just the finished product.
  3. Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock -- a book by Judy Pangman. The title's a bit misleading, but it's still chock full of ideas for coops for your chickens. Use this book more as inspiration for building your own coop, not for plans with a step-by-step guide to building a coop (like the Garden Coop's plans).
Are there other sources for coop design you'd recommend? How did you go about creating your own? Let us know in the comments!

6 comments:

badgerpendous said...

I built a "playhouse coop" as detailed here: http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=16313-playhouse-chicken-coop -- I purchased the plans and made a few adjustments to fit my style/space/situation. My next door neighbor used almost all the same materials and some of the same building techniques, but his coop turned out quite different from mine. It was a fun experience building the coop along with the neighbor. We helped each other out and encouraged each other with some friendly "keeping up with the neighbors" competition.

Anonymous said...

I purchased these plans and found them to be quite easy to follow Click Here!

Anonymous said...

How To Build a Chicken Coop with Easy Step-by-Step Instructions

prakasa said...

I found some tips and guides to build a chicken coop at Easybuildchickencoop.com. They were very helpful. This site contains some tips on raising chicken too.
The author is giving out a free chicken coop plan and provided reviews on other commercial plans too.

Linda J Schlensker said...

Readers might also want to take a look at "Chicken Tractors" if they haven't already done so. A quick Google search will bring up a lot of info. In the past, I've used them with great success. They give the chickens more access to natural food sources, keep the neighbors happier and protect your chickens from most predators. "Weasels excepted."

Gnon said...

Carolina Coops.com

Check us out!

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