Introduction
Which came first: the chicken or the coop? Did you get into raising your own chickens because you were lured by the idea of "free" farm-fresh eggs or swayed by your kids' desire for a few cute little fluffballs scratching about in the backyard, and only then realize that you need a place for them to actually live? Or are you just now thinking of getting into chickens and estimating housing costs as part of your research, knowing that you'd better have a proper shelter ready to go before you come home with a box full of chicks? Whichever came first for you, the desire to adopt chickens or the need to provide them with a coop, welcome.
Chicken owners are a particularly self-reliant and improvisational bunch. It's about making do and adapting. You get paid back in eggs - the equivalent of just a few bucks a month - so the vast majority of caretakers go to great lengths to keep chicken-keeping a low-cost hobby. The whole endeavor is meant to make you just a little more self-sufficient; why spend gobs of cash to do it in the first place?
Maybe that helps explain why so many chicken folks build their own coops. Sure, you can purchase a pre-built shelter for your birds (and some awfully nice ones at that), but for many, that goes against the whole reason they got into hens to begin with. Why pay for something that you can provide for yourself? And if you're clever enough and self-sufficient enough to see the benefits of raising chickens, you can indeed build your own chicken coop.
About This Book
Do some nosing around about building your own chicken coop, and you're likely to come away a little frustrated. Lots of books pontificate about how easy it is to build a working coop. Countless Web sites offer photos of shelters and first-hand accounts of the building process from the caretakers. But what almost none of them offer is instruction on how to do it, a soup-to-nuts guide for the marginally-handy homeowner on what a coop needs, why it needs those things, and how to actually build it yourself.
You can find all the answers you need in this easy-to-digest book. And you don't have to read it cover-to-cover. Need a quick overview of chicken coops in general? You don't have to wade through instructions on how to frame a roof to get it. Looking for a rundown of building materials to consider? It's not lumped in with step-by-step directions for constructing a chicken run. Topics are broken down into separate sections and covered in just the right amount of detail.
And in Part 3 of this book, you find something that no one else will give you: complete building plans for not one, not two, but five different chicken coops. They vary in size and shape, and each has its own unique features that make it special, but everything you need to construct each one of them is right there: a detailed list of what to buy, exact specs on how to cut the lumber, and precise assembly instructions.
A chicken coop seems to constantly evolve over its lifespan. It's always a work in progress. We hope this book becomes a valuable reference tool for you, even after your coop is built and your chickens have moved in. There's plenty of good advice in here on a number of issues that come up for every caretaker, and a wealth of ideas for making your "perfect" chicken coop even better.
Conventions Used in This Book
Before we get started, you should be aware of a few certain conventions - that is, standard formatting techniques - that were used in the printing of this book:
- Bold text is used to highlight the keywords in bulleted lists (like we just did right there at the beginning of this sentence). We also use it to highlight the action part of numbered steps.
- When we introduce a new term, we put it in italics the first time and follow it up with a simple definition. We also use italics to add emphasis.
- All Web site addresses appear in
monofont - Sometimes, an address may break across two lines of text. If this happens, know that we have not included any extra characters (like hyphens) to indicate that break. Type the address into your browser exactly as it appears, pretending that the line break doesn't even exist.
- We feature a lot of measurements and numerical notations. Just a reminder: Feet are sometimes expressed with a single quotation mark, as in 8'. Double quotations marks signify inches, like 16". And when discussing board lumber, the letter "x" is an abbreviation for the word "by," like when we refer to a 2x4.
- We used 12d and 7d nails to build our coops, so that's what we reference in this book. But some areas of the country may see different sizes more commonly stocked in stores and used on job sites. If you have trouble finding 12d and 7d nails in your region, feel free to substitute 16d and 8d nails, respectively.
What You're Not to Read
Skimmers, rejoice. Not every single word in this book is absolutely necessary for you to read in order to come away with a working knowledge of how to build your own chicken coop. Sometimes we include a funny story or fascinating bit of trivia just to provide you with some interesting dinner-table conversation. Those things are put in what we call sidebars - gray boxes filled with text. Skip them if you want, but don't come crying to us if you make it on a game show someday and lose in the final lightning round.
And while we've tried to keep this book as accessible and easy-to-understand as possible, sometimes we had to get just a bit technical. These places are marked with a "Technical Stuff" icon, and while they may offer in-depth background information, they're not packed with make-or-break details that will ruin your coop if you don't commit them to memory.
Foolish Assumptions
Our mothers told us never to assume, but we've ignored that bit of advice. (As well as the one about waiting a half-hour between eating and swimming. That one's just dumb.) In trying to tailor this book to you, we've had to make some assumptions about who you are. Here's what we think:
- You either already own chickens or are seriously considering owning chickens to house on your own property.
- You already know enough about raising chickens that we don't have to spend time on the choosing, feeding, and caring of a flock. If you're new to chickens or simply want a great reference guide that deals with these issues, check out Raising Chickens For Dummies by Kimberly Willis and Rob Ludlow (Wiley).
- You are either a somewhat-competent DIYer (do-it-yourselfer) or eager enough to learn some basic skills that the idea of constructing your own chicken coop is within your abilities. You don't have to be a highly-skilled craftsman or own a workshop full of top-end tools, but you should know which end of a hammer to hold and have a basic level of carpentry knowledge. If you need to call a handyman to hang a picture, constructing your own coop may be a bit of a stretch for you.
- You should be familiar with schematic drawings and how to build from them (we also include step-by-step instructions to round out the instruction you get from the schematics).
- You're not looking to become a commercial chicken farmer who needs to build an industrial-size coop. The largest coop we provide plans for can accommodate 30 birds, and the advice we offer throughout the book pertains to the backyard chicken-keeper.
How This Book Is Organized
We've tried to compartmentalize all the information in this book in a logical and organized way, to help you quickly find the piece of info you need. This allows you to dive head-first into a single particular topic and then go back to whatever you were doing. But you can also read the book straight through from front to back if you prefer.
Think of it like a multiple-course meal: If you want to sit down and start with the soup and salad, move on to the appetizer, fill up on the main entrée and accompanying side dishes, finish with a nice dessert, and top it off with a fancy cheese or cup of coffee, go right ahead. But if all you're looking for is just a quick bite of cake, we've arranged it so you can get that, too.
The book features four parts, with several chapters in each part. Each chapter is broken down into smaller, more digestible sections that are easily identified by headings in bold type.
Part 1: All Cooped Up
These chapters take a broad-view approach to what you need to know in order to start the coop-building process. Chapter 2 looks at the basics: what a chicken coop should provide, what it needs from a location, and how a few common coop styles stack up. Chapter 3 is your primer on the tools you'll need, Chapter 4 runs down some popular building materials, and Chapter 5 helps you hone your skills by teaching some solid carpentry techniques.
Part 2: Constructing a Coop
This part breaks down the building of a coop into phases. Truth be told, though, the info here doesn't apply only to chicken coops. This is solid how-to knowledge that you could put to use in building a toolshed, garden hut, greenhouse, playhouse, or potting shed.
Chapter 6 is all about...
