Coop Resources
Practical coop plans for comfortable, secure housing that suits your flock, space, and building skills.
Step-by-step building guides covering materials, ventilation, roosts, nesting boxes, and predator protection.
Clear housing advice to help beginners create a cleaner, safer, easier-to-manage chicken home.
What Makes a Good Chicken Coop
A good coop does five jobs well: it keeps your flock safe from predators, dry and draft-free, well-ventilated, gives every bird enough space, and is easy for you to clean. Get those right and most common health and behavior problems never start.
The five essentials
- Space: about 4 sq ft of coop and 8–10 sq ft of run per standard hen. Crowding is the #1 cause of pecking and disease. Not sure? Use our Coop Size Calculator.
- Ventilation: vents high up, above roost height, to let moisture and ammonia escape without a draft on the birds. Under-ventilation causes more winter frostbite than cold does.
- Predator-proofing: use ½-inch hardware cloth, never chicken wire, and bury or apron it 12 inches out. Add secure, raccoon-proof latches.
- Nesting boxes: one box per 3–4 hens, roughly 12×12 inches, kept lower than the roosts so hens don’t sleep in them.
- Roosts: 2–4 inch wide bars, 18–24 inches off the floor, with 8–12 inches of perch per bird.
Buy, build, or convert?
Pre-made kits are fast but often sized for fewer birds than advertised. Building from plans is the biggest money-saver and lets you size the coop to your flock. Converting a shed is the easiest route to a spacious walk-in coop. Whichever you choose, size it first with our calculators, then read the step-by-step guides on our blog.
Rule of thumb: build bigger than you think you need. Flocks almost always grow — keepers call it “chicken math.” Questions about your setup? Get in touch.