How to Build Your Own Chicken Coop Cheaply
How to build your own chicken coop on a shoestring budget.
If you are ready to start building a coop, make a list of the materials you need and canvass the price of each one to get an idea of how much it would cost.
If you decide to go straight ahead without doing your shopping first and getting a rough estimate of the total cost, you may end up paying anywhere between $300 to $400 for a chicken coop! I’m quite positive that with the present economic conditions not only here at home but worldwide, spending that much for a chicken coop alone may sound unrealistic.
How do you lower your construction costs then? The most common material used for chicken coop construction is wood. Buying new lumber can be quite expensive especially if you plan to build a chicken coop that can house more than 10 chickens! You certainly do not want to spend that much money, so to be able to cut down on your expenses and benefit from raising chickens in your yard, find out what you should do to cut down on costs.
The first thing you should do is find out where the second hand stores are in your area or the neighboring town. There are good, used lumber available from second hand stores and most of the times; they also have roofing materials, piano hinges, cabinet handles, plywood, fencing materials, poles and the like! Although what you may find are used and old, with nail holes and have cracks, they are perfectly usable for building a chicken coop. You may even find old but usable light fixtures which you can use for the chicken coop that you are building.
One drawback you have to deal with is that the wood available may not all be of the same length but with diligence, you will be able to get everything you need if you look around.
Once you have identified a source (or two of your construction supplies), it’s time to sit down and plan your chicken coop – size, fixed or movable etc.
One advice I can give you is after you have decided on the size, to construct a slightly bigger coop than originally planned since after a year or two of raising chickens you definitely want to have more. There’s no sense in building yet another coop of the same size all over again.
If you decide to go straight ahead without doing your shopping first and getting a rough estimate of the total cost, you may end up paying anywhere between $300 to $400 for a chicken coop! I’m quite positive that with the present economic conditions not only here at home but worldwide, spending that much for a chicken coop alone may sound unrealistic.
How do you lower your construction costs then? The most common material used for chicken coop construction is wood. Buying new lumber can be quite expensive especially if you plan to build a chicken coop that can house more than 10 chickens! You certainly do not want to spend that much money, so to be able to cut down on your expenses and benefit from raising chickens in your yard, find out what you should do to cut down on costs.
The first thing you should do is find out where the second hand stores are in your area or the neighboring town. There are good, used lumber available from second hand stores and most of the times; they also have roofing materials, piano hinges, cabinet handles, plywood, fencing materials, poles and the like! Although what you may find are used and old, with nail holes and have cracks, they are perfectly usable for building a chicken coop. You may even find old but usable light fixtures which you can use for the chicken coop that you are building.
One drawback you have to deal with is that the wood available may not all be of the same length but with diligence, you will be able to get everything you need if you look around.
Once you have identified a source (or two of your construction supplies), it’s time to sit down and plan your chicken coop – size, fixed or movable etc.
One advice I can give you is after you have decided on the size, to construct a slightly bigger coop than originally planned since after a year or two of raising chickens you definitely want to have more. There’s no sense in building yet another coop of the same size all over again.
How To Build A Chicken Coop
A guide on building your own coop.
A guide on building your own coop.
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