What Type of Coop Should You Consider?

One of the answers you need before you build your chicken coop is determining which type of chicken coop is best for your situation. Understanding which type of chick coop is best for your situation is going to help you in raising happy and health chickens with the fewest unexpected headaches.

Since you're the one investing in building a chicken house, it's common sense that you match your “chicken raising” needs, with your chicken raising soluations.

The rest of this page will guide you through some of the main factors you'll want to consider. Your thoughts on these factors will guide you to being more confident in the type of chicken coop that you'll want to build, and the satisfaction of making your confident informed choice.

Size of Coop Based on Number of Hens

Perhaps the biggest factor is, “What size of chicken coop do you need to build for healthy chickens and lower maintenance?” Of course, there are plans for small, medium, and large plans for the chicken coops. How many chickens do you intend to raise in each coop (you CAN build more than one).

Don't cram too many chickens into your coop, not only will it negatively affect their health (think factory raised chickens with no elbow room, and plenty of disease), but it will negatively affect their egg laying outputs. Each hen, or female chicken, requires it's own space to feel comfortable and lay hearty eggs. Don't sacrifice on space. Don't crowd her, or she'll repay you with her poor health and poorer egg quality.

Don't get hung up on 'prefecting' the size calculations. Otherwise you might suffer from analysis paralysis and never get anything done. You might want to just plan for a coop that is slightly larger than you want. If there truly is too much room for the number of chickens you're raising, it's likely easier to add more laying hens to the chicken coop than to add-on (retrofit or 2^nd coop).

Mobile Coop or Stationary Coop

Do you want your chicken coop to be movable, or are you planning on keeping it in the same place for the long-term?

An advantage of portable chicken coops, is that you can move it around your property. You can also more easily take it with you if you sell your property.

Many people also indicate that portable chicken coops allow for easier maintenance. You can move them to a preferred maintenance site, or simply manipulate them more easily to access areas that need maintenance.

However, permanent or stationary chicken coops may be build more solidly (since they don't need to be lighter to move). Plus, they won't be subject to the jostling of being moved a few times per month (or year).

Protection of the Chicken

Most people forget that their chickens are likely to be attacked by predators. Your coop should include strong fencing to keep all varieties of natural predators away from the hens.

Appearance (if that matters to you)

How pretty do you want your chicken coop to be?

If you are raising chickens near neighbors, you might be under pressure to have a more attractive coop than if you're raising chickens with no neighbors in sight.

The same is true if your spouse refuses to allow any chicken coops that are an eyesore.

In Conclusion

So, hopefully these points were helpful in guiding your thoughts to help you decide which type of chicken coop you wish to build. Our goal is to help you save money by helping you make more informed decisions and also to reduce the number of “oopsies” you have – so that you can enjoy raising chickens with minimal surprises.