Believe it or not, chickens can get bored, so it’s important to give them plenty of things to keep them busy.
One of the simplest yet most effective chicken boredom busters is to give them a swing – and for anyone who wants to know how to make one, here are 24 plans we found online for a DIY chicken swing you might want to try building at home.
1. How to Build a DIY Chicken Swing – Popular Science
To get things started, here’s a post that tells you why building a swing for your chickens is such a good idea. It then goes on to give you a plan for building a swing that your birds will simply love, and it can be done for as little as only $7. So what are you waiting for?
2. How To Make a Chicken Swing – Urban Chickadoodle
As this YouTuber explains in the intro to her video, her chickens have started to display certain boredom behaviors such as chewing their coop, so to give them something different to occupy their time, she decided to make a chicken swing. The swing is well-made and will give the birds somewhere to play, and it’s the kind of thing just about anybody will be able to copy at home.
3. How to Make a Chicken Swing – Backyard Poultry
The chicken swing we learn how to make in this tutorial shows just how simple it can be to add extra activities for your birds to enjoy. We like the way this swing is made from a log, which gives it a rustic look and is also a more natural material for hens to perch on. It’s also a super-cheap idea, so you won’t have to spend a whole lot of cash making it.
4. DIY Chicken Swing – Critter Boutique
In this video, we learn how to make a chicken swing using nothing more than an old branch. Since you don’t need to spend money buying wood for this plan, it will cost you next to nothing – and your birds are sure to appreciate having somewhere to perch and swing, helping to alleviate their boredom, especially on days when the weather is bad and they can’t leave their coop.
5. Chicken Swing: 4 Steps – Instructables
Here’s another plan for making a fun swing for your chickens using nothing but a piece of branch. The tutorial gives you a list of the tools you’ll need to make the swing, and it then gives you a clear explanation of what you need to do – in four easy-to-follow steps – so this is the kind of plan just about anybody will be able to copy, regardless of their previous DIY experience.
6. DIY Chicken Swing – Zuntic
This super-cute double swing is a little more advanced than some of the other chicken swings we’ve seen, but if you’re looking for a fun project to tackle and are interested in making something a bit more sophisticated than just a branch hung on two pieces of rope, this could be just what you’re looking for. It’s true that none of the chickens seem to want to perch on the swings – but that’s another problem!
7. Chicken Swing: How to Make an Inexpensive Swing for Chickens
The premise of this plan was that the blogger who wrote it decided to make a swing for her chickens using only stuff she found in her home and her backyard so there’d be no need for a trip to the local hardware store. We love the simple idea she came up with, and we also enjoyed seeing the photos of the chickens being “trained” to use it. Check it out and see what we mean!
8. DIY chicken run perch and swings – Pete B: East Texas Homesteading
In this video, this YouTuber demonstrates how he built some new swings for his chickens to replace the old ones that fell down – along with some new perches for them to sit on. Chickens with plenty to occupy them are happy and productive chickens, and we’re sure the ones in this video are much more fulfilled now they have swings and perches to keep them busy.
9. Make a Log Swing for Your Chickens – Fresh Eggs Daily® with Lisa Steele
As this blogger writes, all you need to make a chicken swing is a log, some clothesline and a few other inexpensive items everyone should have easy access to. When she decided her chickens needed a swing, she set off into the woods to find a suitable log, and this post details how she went about turning it into a swing. The swing looks great, and there’s even a photo of a chicken sitting on it – proof that this is a plan that gets the chickens’ seal of approval.
10. Building a Chicken Swing – The Bourne Homestead
To show how inexpensive it can be to provide your chickens with a swing, these YouTubers made theirs without spending more than a dollar. Like with some of the other chicken swings we’ve seen, they had a bit of trouble getting the chickens to actually use the swing. However, hopefully, the chickens will get used to it after a while and will spend more time perching on it!
11. DIY Macrame Chicken Swing Tutorial – Welcome to Chickenlandia
While some people are content to give their chickens a very basic swing to perch on, other more creative types might prefer to do something a little fancier – like the chicken swing we learn about in this post. Of course, you don’t need to go to all this trouble, but as this blogger writes, it looks super-cute in the run, and judging by the photos, the chickens appreciate it too!
12. Making a No-Cost Chicken Swing – Gagne Farms
If you don’t want to spend any money making a chicken swing for your birds, here’s another video to check out. In it, we learn how this YouTuber made her chicken swing for no money at all, and we think she did a great job! The whole point of this idea is to use whatever you have available, so even if you don’t have the same materials as she did, at least this video should give you some other ideas about how to build a swing for your chickens for free.
13. DIY Chicken Coop Swing – homesteadlifestyle.com
The chicken swing we learn how to make in this tutorial is about as simple as they come. However, sometimes simple is best – because there’s no need to overcomplicate things unnecessarily. And if that’s a sentiment you can relate to, this is just the kind of idea you should love.
14. DIY Simple Swing for Chickens – Two Creative Chicks
In this video, you’ll see two ideas for chicken swings – one treat swing and one traditional swing. The problem was that at first, the chickens wouldn’t use the regular swing, so these YouTubers came up with an idea for a more creative treat swing. However, now the chickens are happy to use both, so with the two types of swing in their run, they have plenty to keep them busy.
15. How To Make a DIY Chicken Swing for Your Chicken Coop – Farm House Fit Chick
As well as teaching you how to make a basic chicken swing, this post also gives you tips about how to get them to use it. Chickens not using the lovely swings their owners build for them is a common problem we’ve come across in quite a lot of the plans we’ve seen – but with the advice this blog gives you, your chickens should be happily playing on their new swing in no time.
16. This Chicken Swing is So Cute!
This YouTube Short shows the most basic chicken swing imaginable – it’s essentially just a piece of rope. We’re not sure how useful this design will be in practical terms, but seeing the little chick sitting on it was just too cute, so we thought we had to include it in our list. Give it a quick click and see what we mean!
17. DIY Chicken Swing – Bring Fun to All Your Feathered Pets
Providing chickens with a swing helps alleviate boredom while also giving them somewhere to perch where they can get a good view of everything that’s going on around them. Also, as this blog post explains, it’s best to give chickens a swing to play on from when they’re young because that way, they find it easier to accept and get used to. And if you want to know how to go about building one, this post has all the details about that too.
18. Chickens Get a Swing in their Coop – The Party Animal
Here’s another super-simple idea for building a chicken swing – this time using an old piece of log and two chains. If you happen to have chains like this lying about, this swing won’t cost you anything to make – and for once, it looks like the chickens in this video take to their new swing right away.
19. DIY Chicken Swing Perch – petdiys.com
We’ve seen a lot of chicken swings that all look quite similar, but the creation in this post is a little more unique – because it’s made of four branches arranged in a square to offer the chickens somewhere to perch and swing. Somehow, we have a feeling the chickens will feel more comfortable perching on a swing like this – so why not build something similar and see how your birds react?
20. How to Build Chicken Swings – How To Build
The chickens in this video already have a good selection of perches to sit on, but this YouTuber has decided to add two extra swings – and in the video, he shows how he did it. The swings are made from two branches he cut from a fallen tree that are then hung from some lengths of rope, and that’s all you really need to give your chickens a swing to play on. A great idea and one we’re sure plenty of people will want to try for themselves.
21. DIY Chicken Swing for The Brooder – BackYard Chickens
Even chicks can benefit from a swing to play on, and this plan teaches you how to make a swing for your brooder. You can also replicate a scaled-up model for your adult hens, helping to give all your birds something to keep them occupied to make sure they don’t get bored.
22. Making a Chicken Swing with High Caliber Craftsman
A chicken swing doesn’t require a lot of work, but if you want to put your woodworking skills to use, you can make something a little more advanced – just like the YouTuber in this video. The tutorial takes the format of a time-lapse shot of the swing being made, so all you need to do is watch the video and then copy what they show us to make your own chicken swing just like it.
23. DIY Chicken Swing – CK Backyard Farm
This is another of the simplest chicken swings you can imagine – it consists of just a plank of wood and two lengths of rope. However, that’s all chickens need to keep them happy, so why bother making anything more complicated?
24. DIY: Building A Chicken Swing – House in the Woods
To finish, here’s a video of some YouTubers trying various ideas to give their chickens a swing to play on. One version they tried made use of a piece of PVC piping, but that didn’t work well because the chickens kept falling off. They got it right in the end though, and if you want to see which version worked best, give their video a quick watch!
Plenty of great ideas to consider
As we’ve seen, there’s no shortage of great plans online for building DIY chicken swings, ranging from the extremely simple to the more advanced and sophisticated.
We’ve enjoyed collecting these plans for you, so we hope you’ve enjoyed reading and watching them all too. And above all, we hope we’ve helped you find the ideas and inspiration you needed to start building a DIY chicken swing of your own.
