Chicken Hen House – How to Go About Building a Hen House : hen house

If you’ve been raising hens for any long period of time, you’ll know the importance of a hen house. If you’re serious about raising and looking after any number of hens then you need a durable hen house, no doubt about it. You have two options when it comes to hen houses – purchase a pre-built one from a farm store OR build your own. The latter option is one that is more appealing simply because it’s a cheaper option and you can customize the hen house to your own needs.

Before you even start building a chicken coop you need to consider a number of different factors like the size. Obviously the size of your hen house is going to depend on the number of hens you have. If you have between 1 – 4 hens then an ideal size would be three to nine feet with a 10 foot high ceiling. You’re also want an enclosed outside area of about nine to twelve feet, unless you want to let your hens roam your backyard… not a good idea as you’ll find dropping everywhere and predators will have easy access to your hens!

Once you’ve got an idea of the size of the hen enclosure that you’d like, it’s time to go about building it. I recommend picking up a book or some other sort of guide containing all sorts of hen house designs and a step-by-step guides for building those designs. You can pick these up from the Internet for a low price. Once you have one the guide should walk you through the whole process of building a chicken house, from the materials needed to where the parts go-together.

Of course, you don’t have to take that route. If you’re quite the handyman then you’ll probably do just fine without a guide. And you can always join chicken house forums to ask for advise etc.

On these discussion forums you’ll even find some hen house designs being posted by fellow members, so even if you’re clueless about all things hen house, then these forums can be quite a powerful resource.