When you make the decision to start housing your own chickens in your back yard it can be a great thing. You will enjoy it when you’ve dozens of fresh eggs to dish out to your family every single morning. However, when you begin the process of trying to find really good chicken coop designs you’ll discover that just about all of the designs out there aren’t really that good at all.

Bear in mind that building your chicken pen is only the first step, because you’ll also need to find some solid information that will assist you in taking good care of your chickens as well as maintaining your coop. You’ll also need to be aware of the best foods to feed your chickens because after all you and your family are going to be eating their eggs so you want them to be the best possible quality and taste.

While a lot of people view their chickens as pets and part of the family, many people get into the business of small poultry farming for the eggs that hens provide. If you’re interested in the eggs, then you’re going to need to include nesting boxes for your birds. Fortunately, they couldn’t be easier to build. While you can opt to purchase large steel nesting boxes or expensive pre-made ones, that’s really not necessary. Building your own nesting boxes is cheap, easy, and can be fun.

Make sure you have a good source of light for your chickens. Ideally this would be natural sunlight and youd choose a chicken coop plan that factors this into the building plans and builds it at the right angle towards the sun.If you live in an area that does not get that much natural sunlight though or where you are building the coop does not allow for light to penetrate in, then you will want to consider a non-natural light source to keep your chickens happy.

One of the most important step that we are covering when you want to know how to build a chicken coop is that your chicken feeders and waterers should be placed so your flock can have easy access to them. However, you should also be careful where you place them because chickens like to make a mess due to their chicken scratching instincts. You dont want to have feed all over your coop’s floor, so in order to avoid this, you should place the feeders at the height of your chicken’s back. This way, they have to stretch their necks to get to the feed, but wont be able to reach the feeders with their feet. The same goes for the waterers. Just make sure that you keep the feeders filled with fresh water throughout the day.

Hens aren’t particularly gluttonous creatures. They’ll eat their fill and then go about their business. Thus, most chicken feeders work from a very simple design with minimal human interaction - they don’t require any electronics or things like that. In most models, you simply fill a larger hopper with feed that automatically drains down into a central feeding tray. As the hens eat more of the feed, the extra food in the hopper filters down and keeps their tray full.