Raising hens is such a joy, and besides their companionship and cute antics, they also provide their owners with a steady supply of fresh eggs while helping keep the local bug population under control at the same time.
There are so many advantages to keeping hens, but buying a coop can be prohibitively expensive. However, motivated DIYers can save lots of cash by making one themselves – and here are 23 fantastic plans we found online that show you how it’s done.
1. Simple DIY Chicken Coop – Country Life Charm Blog
This blogger and her husband were inspired to build their own chicken coop by the price tags attached to most of the pre-made ones they saw, and this post details how they did it. The design is easy enough for anyone to copy, but the finished coop looks highly impressive. The chickens seem content too, so we can only assume they approve of their new home!
2. How to Build a Chicken Coop DIY – Great Home Ideas
In this video, you can find out how these DIYers build a DIY chicken coop for the residents of a nursing home. It’s full of useful tips like how to ensure the chickens don’t injure themselves on sharp edges and how to make it predator-proof. It’s a wholesome story too, which makes it all the more interesting to watch.
3. How to Build a Chicken Coop Step-by-Step – The Old Farmer’s Almanac
If you’re thinking about constructing your own chicken coop, this comprehensive guide will be essential reading. Building a coop is not quite as easy as it might seem because there are so many things to take into account. However, this post gives you info on everything from where to place the coop to what to use for the floor, ensuring no detail is overlooked.
4. How to Build a Backyard Chicken Coop – Woodworking Skill
For any keen woodworkers looking for a challenge, this video could be just the thing. It consists of a timelapse shot of this talented YouTuber building a coop, and if you have the necessary skills, you should have no trouble replicating it. It’s fun watching it take shape, and it looks amazing when it’s done, so we’re sure lots of people will enjoy trying to copy this plan at home.
5. 10 Mistakes Building a Chicken Coop
You might be lucky enough to find a plan that teaches you how to DIY the chicken coop of your dreams – but most people will need to adapt plans for their needs. However, when you do this, there are several common mistakes that people often make – and this post teaches you all about them, helping you avoid making the same errors yourself.
6. DIY Chicken Coop from Free Pallets
Pallet construction is now a well-established sub-genre of DIY, and here’s an excellent plan that teaches you how to make a chicken coop from pallet wood. The coop is only big enough for one or two hens, so if you want more, you’ll have to adapt the ideas a little. However, that should be easy enough for anyone with basic DIY skills, making this a project many will be keen to attempt.
7. Lady Goats: Building A Chicken House
Here’s an interesting blog post that tells the story of how this family decided to build a coop to keep chickens in their suburban backyard. As they explain, the coop had to be cute because it’s visible from everywhere – and cute it certainly is! – and it’s compact too. They based it on a $1,500 model they saw but built theirs for far less. Check out the post to see how they did it!
8. Ultimate Backyard Chicken Coop Build – How to DIY
Lots of DIY chicken coop plans seem to have words like “ultimate” in the title, but as soon as we clicked on this video, we knew this one deserves it. This is a super-impressive deluxe coop packed full of awesome features. It’s an ambitious project to attempt, but if you think you have the DIY skills required, it’s well worth the time and effort because the result will be amazing.
9. How to Build a Chicken Coop – The Complete Step-by-Step Guide
If you’re new to chicken keeping or not much of a DIYer, this comprehensive guide is for you. It contains all the info you’ll need to build the perfect coop for your needs, explaining the basics and giving you various options to consider before you start. You can then follow the detailed plans to construct a coop you can be proud of – and one that your chickens will love.
10. Backyard Chicken Coop Build DIY – Timelapse
We love this kind of timelapse video showing skilled DIYers at work – it’s almost mesmerizing to watch as the project takes shape. The video documents the whole chicken coop project from start to finish. There’s no commentary or even any sound, but if you know your way around a toolbox, you should be able to copy this idea to build a professional-looking coop just like the one we see here.
11. How to Build a DIY Chicken Coop – Bunnings Australia
Here’s an original idea from Australia – it’s a chicken coop with a mini garden on top where you can grow your own herbs. That way, not only will you have fresh eggs from your hens – but you’ll also have what’s necessary to add flavor to the dishes you cook with them. This plan gives you a detailed explanation of everything you’ll need to do to build one of your own, and it also includes a list of the tools and equipment required – so what are you waiting for?
12. DIY Chicken Coop – The Home Depot
This video was uploaded by The Home Depot, so as you can imagine, it’s a high-quality plan. It teaches you how to make a professional-looking coop that’s big enough to house four chickens, and it breaks everything down into simple steps, making it as easy as possible to follow. This is a great plan for anyone looking for inspiration for their next DIY project, so check it out and see if you want to have a go.
13. How to Build a Chicken Coop – This Old House
As this post points out, keeping hens will provide you with a fresh supply of eggs and will even help you keep bugs under control – but first, you’ll need somewhere to house them. This predator-proof raised coop could be the answer you’re looking for, and although it’s rated as “hard” and will cost over $500 to build, the finished coop will more than repay the time and money you put into it.
14. Designing and Building the Ultimate Sustainable Chicken Coop from Scratch – Part 1
This video comes from a YouTube channel that’s run by a couple who are dedicated to sustainable homesteading. It’s an ambitious project and is intended for more than just casual chicken-keeping hobbyists, but if you need a sizeable coop for a larger flock, it could be something worth attempting. This is Part I of a three-video series – check out the other two uploads to see how it looked when it was done.
15. Build a Chicken Run and Coop from Recycled Materials – Backyard Poultry
For us, the essence of true DIY is recycling and repurposing whatever we have to hand to create something beautiful and functional for the lowest possible cost. That’s the spirit of this post too since it shows you how to build a chicken coop using only recycled materials. It presents several different ideas that people have tried, leaving you to simply choose the one you prefer and then get started on building one of your own.
16. How to Design a Chicken Coop: Automatic Food, Water, Easy to Clean
The coop this video teaches you how to make is a little more advanced than many others, so it will take a bit of extra time and effort to build. However, once it’s finished, it’s full of time-saving features that will help minimize the number of hours you need to spend looking after your chickens. Sound intriguing? Then give the video a watch to see how it’s done!
17. DIY Chicken Coop – MWA Woodworks
This multi-day project is just the kind of thing that should appeal to anyone looking to put their woodworking skills to the test. It’s a plan for a large coop, and we love the way it includes some woodworking flourishes like the fancy crisscross bracing – not strictly necessary, but this blogger wanted to include it just because he could. This is perhaps not one for more inexperienced DIYers to attempt, but if you have the skills, it will make for a rewarding challenge.
18. Minimal Care Poultry Housing for Backyard Homestead
As this YouTuber explains at the start of her video, the goal of this project was to build the most efficient chicken coop possible. They also included a lot of innovative “non-traditional” features in the coop, but everything seems to work perfectly. It’s designed to be practical and low maintenance rather than cute, but if that’s what you’re looking for, this is a plan you’ll love.
19. Our Urban Chicken Coop Plan – The Tangled Nest
If, on the other hand, cute is just what you’re going for, this is a plan that might be of more interest. That’s not to say it’s not practical because it does the job of housing chickens perfectly – but it also pays attention to aesthetics, giving your flock a beautiful home to inhabit.
20. DIY Chicken Coop Step-by-Step Guide – Concrete Taxi
Here’s a simple, matter-of-fact guide that takes you through all the steps of building a coop from the planning stage right up to applying the finishing touches. It includes details about the things you’ll need to consider before you start building, and it also gives you a list of the tools you’ll need before you start. Then it’s a case of following the logical plan to construct the coop – and after that, just add hens.
21. How to Build an Easy Affordable Chicken Coop for 4 to 6 Chickens
For many people, the attraction of building a DIY coop is the amount of money you can save – since buying a pre-made coop can be prohibitively expensive. That’s what this simple plan is all about since it teaches you how to build one if you’re on a more limited budget. It does the job though, and we’re sure plenty of people will want to build something just like it.
22. Easy to Maintain Chicken House (Part 1)
If you want to try something different, instead of building your chickens a coop, why not give them a whole house of their own? That’s what this video is about because it shows you how this YouTuber keeps his chicken in a specially adapted building. With the modifications he’s included, it makes keeping chickens as simple and efficient as possible – and if you want to know what that involved, check out his video for a guided tour.
23. The Palace Chicken Coop: Free Chicken Coop Plan
This DIYer named the coop she built “The Palace”, and if you want a palatial home for your birds too, it’s a plan you have to see. When she was designing it, she set out to build something aesthetically pleasing, easy to clean and maintain, sturdy enough to resist Florida storms, suitable for the “deep litter” method, flood-resistant, well-ventilated and big enough for five to seven hens. We think she did a fantastic job – give her post a read and see if you agree!
Lots of great plans to help you get inspired
As we’ve seen, whether you need a plan for a coop to house just two or three hens or one for a whole flock, there are plenty of great ideas out there to help you get started.
We’ve enjoyed compiling this list because of the amount of creativity and ingenuity we found, so we hope you enjoyed the plans as much as we did. And above all, we hope we’ve helped you find the inspiration you need to build a DIY chicken coop of your own.
