Top Tips For Choosing Plans For Chicken Coops

There are many things to think about when you are choosing chicken coop plans and if you are just starting out you might find it difficult to know which design features are important. In this article I will outline for you the three features I think are most important for keeping your chickens warm, safe and content. Make sure these are all included in your chicken coop plans and you won’t go far wrong.

Provide Plenty Of Space

In order for your birds to be happy as well as productive, you need to allow plenty of space for them inside the chicken coop and you should follow the suggested guidelines as closely as you can. Poultry associations recommend that you allow for 1 square foot per chicken, so this is your starting point. Calculate the amount of outside space you have and then make a decision about the dimensions of the coop you can accommodate in it, keeping in mind that provision of a run would be ideal. You can then make this calculation and work out how much square footage you have available to you and therefore how many birds you can accommodate. It is definitely better to take this approach than to decide how many chickens you want to keep and then try and cram them into the space available. Most blueprints for chicken coops will tell you how many birds their design is made to take, but it is still worth checking this out for yourself.

Make Sure There Is Enough Light

A lot of the pictures you see of chicken houses are taken from the front and they look closed in. This is great for keeping your birds safe from predators and from a security viewpoint. However, what many new breeders are not aware of is that a lot of chicken coop designs locate a window at the edge of the roofline (this does not always show on pictures and photographs) and this is an important feature.

In order to lay eggs efficiently, chickens need a lot of light, preferably up to 14 hours a day. In order for this to happen artificial lighting may need to be provided in the early morning hours, so that the hens can still take part in twilight at their roosting time. So study the chicken house plans you want to use to ensure that your birds will have a lot of light.

Ventilation is Very Important

When chickens live together in a coop they generate an awful lot of moisture which causes condensation and can lead to harmful bacteria developing. So it is essential that there is sufficient ventilation to prevent this. Chicken droppings can also be a problem if a coop is not properly ventilated because their waste creates high levels of ammonia which is not good for either humans or chickens. So if will pay to check your plans for chicken coops to make sure that there is either a window that opens or that vents are built into the area where the walls meet the roof. But please bear in mind that whilst chickens can tolerate some degree of cold, they are very susceptible to drafts, so the ventilation solution needs to take this into consideration.

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