Choosing the Right Size For Your Chicken Coop By Shannon Clark

Before you start the building process, one of the most important things is that you're choosing the right size for your chicken coop. Individuals who do not put enough time and consideration into this process often find that they build a chicken coop that does not meet their needs properly.

If you build it too small your chickens will not be laying eggs properly, so it's vital you're making sure you're doing what you need to correctly to get your daily supply of fresh eggs like you wanted.

Here are the main things that will factor into you choosing the proper size for your chicken coop.

Total Number Of Birds

The first thing you need to take into consideration when building your chicken coop is the total number of birds you plan to house. If you're planning on keeping three or more chickens, you're going to need a medium or large size.

If you try and go around this and make it smaller despite having more birds, there is a very high chance that you will run into some major problems. Be sure you're choosing the size correctly.

Total Area Of Land Mass

Moving on, the next thing that you must factor in is the total area of land mass you are able to build on. It's vital that you're using land that is landscaped properly, so if you live on a small farm and don't have much flat land available, this too will influence how large of a coop you can build.

If you want to spend extra money to have the area landscaped more that's fine, just understand exactly what you need to get done before building.

Budget For The Chicken Coop

Last, you want to consider your budget for the chicken coop. There are many ways you can decrease the costs and build a cheap chicken house, but when you are building larger you will need more building materials - there's no way around that, so you should expect to pay slightly more.

So be sure you're keeping these points in mind as you go about the building process. If you plan correctly you will choose the perfect size for your chicken coop that will encourage your chickens to lay you fresh eggs on a daily basis.

Here is more information on how you can build a chicken house on a budget. To read my review of 'Building A Chicken Coop', please click here

Need Help Building a Chicken Coup? By Jason Scofield

Building a chicken coop just makes economical sense and will be one of the best investments you'll ever make. Not only will you have a self sustained miniature-farm that recycles your food scraps, provides high quality fertilizer and produces fresh organic eggs, but you'll be proud to know that you made something with your own two hands.

Before you start building, make sure to acquire good advice and guidelines regarding materials and methods as this will ensure that your chickens are protected from predators, their health is maintained and it will also ensure delivery of more eggs as well as better quality eggs. Many of the products available on the internet to assist you in building a chicken coop require no fancy tools or previous experience.

These products are especially created to enable even a novice with no technical experience to build a chicken coop with basic tools that can be found in most garages. These products will guide you in acquiring and assembling the correct materials, ventilation, insulation, positioning, lighting, perches, nesting, litter collection and protection from the elements and other animals.

It doesn't matter whether you require a big or small coop, or if you have a small or big budget. These products will provide you with options for different sizes and functionalities, for example a self enclosed mid-size chicken coop for just a small fraction of the price of buying a new one, a large premium coop that is easy to clean, automatically collects eggs and allows you to maintain more chickens or a portable chicken coop that makes cleaning simple and provides nutritious fertilizer for your garden.

Visit DIY Chicken Coop for detailed step-by-step instructions on how to build an affordable chicken coop that promotes healthy chickens, protects them from predators and ultimately delivers more high quality eggs. http://www.diy-chicken-coop.com.

A Chicken Ark - Just One Weekend and Three Chickens Equals Beautiful Eggs For Years to Come By Mary Marshall

Keeping chickens is simple and very rewarding. The easiest way to get started on a small scale is to build a chicken ark. These are the triangular shaped coops that can be moved around (which is why they're sometimes called chicken tractors).

In just one weekend you could get set up with a chicken ark and three laying hens - who will start lying eggs soon after they are settled in. Chicken arks are straightforward to build, even if you haven't got advanced woodworking skills, if you have a good set of plans and instructions.

Building a chicken ark is a great project to do with your kids - they can come with you to get the materials, read the instructions, do some of the construction - or even make the whole thing themselves. Imagine how proud they'd be!

We found loads of plans on the Internet - but most of them were pretty sketchy. It was well worth buying plans that were clear and complete with good illustrations. We found some chicken ark plans that not only have good instructions on how to make an ark, but also for two bigger chicken coops as well.

Another plus was a complete guide to keeping chickens, which were just right for us as beginners. We feed them on vegetables scraps, a small amount of chicken feed and grit, and of course they forage on weeds, insects and grubs. The three girls are thriving and have been laying an egg an day each.

We do like to treat them though. Once a week we make up a mix of porridge oats with some milk plus a tin of cat food and some of our meat scraps - they love it and come to us to be fed.

Chickens also love to take dust baths, and the dust helps prevent parasites on their feathers and skin. We particularly like the chicken ark design because we can just move it to a dry spot and the chickens can roll over, flap about and cover themselves in dust.

Our first three chickens are laying now - beautiful eggs, completely different from supermarket ones, and they'll go on laying beautiful eggs for at least three years. Not bad for one weekend's work.

Next spring we're planning to build the bigger hen house and get a few more chickens - and then we'll even have enough eggs to sell some to our neighbors.

If you're planning to keep chickens, and like the idea of a chicken ark, I'd recommend you visit the chicken ark for easy to build chicken ark plans.