Chicken House Plans

June 11th, 2009 by KittyKitty

There’s an old saying that goes about people . . . “don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.” (I believe that was Harvey MacKay). Same holds true for your Chicken House Plans. You want to have plans so that your baby chicks wil grow in a healthy, safe environment. There are as many reasons families want to raise chickens as there are people. For our family, we received a “present” of 12 baby chicks for Easter Sunday. At first I thought “what the heck am I going to do with chickens???” However, I remembered another great saying “if life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” (no more quotes . Now I wasn’t thinking of eating the chickens, but with the cost of fresh eggs going up, then the most reasonable thing to do was at least build a chicken house for the little chickadees. I was reveling in the thought about how fun it would be — a family project to build a chicken house, and soon we would be enjoying our own organically fresh eggs. This was a single investiment if done right, it will pay in fresh eggs for years. So when you are looking for the best Chicken House Plans, consider these following steps in your plan. The first thing you need to plan is where you will locate your new chicken house. From here, you will have a good idea what size limits you have. On e thing to keep in mind is a simple 4 foot by 8 foot box-type structure. This makes it easy on the materials sides because most plywood and other materials come in 4 x 8 foot sheets. Secondly, you want to establish the frame for the chicken house play area. You can accomplish this with nails or screws at the bottom of the four pieces. (I recommend using screws and an electric screwdriver. This makes it easy to take apart if you ever want to move your chicken house: simply unscrew and move the wood parts!) With this done, then you can attach two corner sections, each consisting of two pieces to make the respective corner. With the framework finished, the play area can be closed off with chicken wire. Once the basic chicken house frame is complete, you can begin with the actual house. You really should install a chicken house door and determine its placement. For our family, it was better to put the door near the back nesting area, which helps with your egg hunts down the road. How you attach the door is going to be determined by what kind of door you would like. One idea that we used was a door near the nesting area, which opened upward. You can use an old broom handle or other pole to hold the door open so you can get to the eggs in the nesting area. The next step is generally installing the roof. Plywood is perfect for this becase it comes in 4 x 8 foot sheets, but check with your local lumbaryard for other material options in your area. When the roof is done, you can go forward with the nesting part of the chicken house. The size of your chicken house will depend on how many chickens you will raise. A 4 x 8 foot basic chicken house is generally good to raise approximately 10 chickens. We built our nesting area by making two 4 foot sections attached to the bottom of the frame as support for our nesting box. With the support in place, you can build a basic nesting box out of plywood to place on this support system. The nesting area usually goes near a back wall away frorm the front entrance (and near that door location for eeasy acces to the eggs. In the front of your chicken house you want to cut an opening, much like the size of a small pet door, so that the chickens can access the chicken house play area. When you’re finished with your chicken house, make sure you sand all the rough edeges and corners smooth and safely cut or bend all chicken wire out of the way from harm. You also want to double check that no sharp edges of the chicken wire protrude and are either removed or bent in such a way that they will not harm the chickens. Lighting and ventilation are important to the health and welfare of your chickens. You may want to have open sides that can be closed with hinged doors made of plywood. That way you can open the doors in the daytime hours for light and ventilation, and they can be closed in the evening or when you need to protect the chickens from bad weather. When it comes to chicken house floors, you have some options. Most folks use sawdust, but some farms and others have access to hay or use straw. Others even use sand at the bottop of their chicken house. Check with your local feed store or veterinarian to see what is the best material for the weather conditions in your area. Having a solid chicken house will provide your chickens with a safe, healthy environment where they can grow and prosper. For us, the kids enjoyed watching the chickens grow, and they loved getting the eggs for our breakfast table. Enjoy your flock of chickens, and make sure you consider these steps in your Chicken House Plans