If you currently keep, or plan on keeping, a flock of chickens in your backyard or mini farm, it’s essential to build a hen house. This ensures that your flock remains happy, healthy, and highly productive. Taking a Do-It-Yourself approach to construction will not only save you hundreds, but it will also give you a sense of self satisfaction.
Traditional Vs Barn Style Hen Houses
There are typically 2 types of hen houses you can build. Both are quite similar, and depend mostly on how much space you have, and how much you want to invest towards construction.
The 2 styles are:
1) The Traditional Hen House – With a team of 2, this choice of hen house can be built in as little as one weekend. It looks very much like a “standard” chicken coop, with a pitched roof and multiple perches. It’s arguably the most attractive style of coop, and can be easily customized.
2) The Chicken Barn – This is slightly larger than the previously mentioned design, and includes a big chicken run. You’ll need quite a bit of space in your backyard if you’re going to build this style of chicken coop. What makes it so great is the semi-automated egg collection system, which is very simple to build.
Of course, there are quite a few smaller options as well. It all depends on what you’re willing to invest, both financially and time-wise. You might find that you don’t even need such a large construction for your birds.
Positioning & Portability
Neither of the hen house designs mentioned above could be described as portable. You’ll need to dedicate a portion of your yard to a permanent chicken enclosure. Having said this, you can easily customize a chicken coop of this size to be more or less semi-portable. Many high quality chicken coop plans will outline this for you.
Where To Find Plans To Build A Hen House
The most obvious place to obtain high quality chicken coop drawings and schematics is your local hardware store, or even bookstore. However, if you’re a bit more technologically adept, you can download such plans over the internet. These digital plans are generally of a high quality, and come in PDF format.
