If you’re handy, you might want to build your own chicken coop to suit your property. There are lots of good photos for inspiration on BackYardChickens.com. They have separate sections for small, medium and large coops. If I could offer any advice, based on experience, make ease of access one of your top priorities. You will need to clean this thing, and I’ve crawled in chicken poop enough to wish I had designed better access. Second, but no less important, is security. Remember, everything eats chicken. I sometimes stand outside the coop and play “let’s be a predator.” If I was a raccoon, how would I get in? A fox? A weasel? An owl? A hawk? A coyote? A domestic dog? An opossum? The list goes on.

Our coop in progress is a variation of the Playhouse Chicken Coop (see image below). The enclosed run should be a huge improvement over my last setup. I can’t tell you how many times I would shake my fist and yell at the red-tailed hawks circling the open coop yard. I also learned (Ok, this could be snopes.com material, if they reported on chicken fatalities) that owls prefer to eat the heads of chickens. I once entered the coop to collect eggs and found a decapitated chicken in her nesting box. I was new to chickens at that point and easily traumatized. Johnny, our neighbor, must have been worrying about my impending nervous breakdown. Scott spent the next eight hours enclosing the covered area of the coop, which prevented future owk attacks.

Which leads into next piece of advice – be prepared for death, potentially lots of it. It’s very sad when it happens, but everything has to eat, and chicken tastes really good. I did have many birds that lived 6+ years, including Larry the rooster who died of old age. More about Larry later.