hi,
My kids are in 4H and we decided to get chickens after the winter. So, I am trying to figure out - is it best to build your own coop or get one of those pre - fab ones and put it together???? Our winters can be pretty brutal here (Lewis County, NY - snow country) - so I want to keep that in mind when planning a coop for our chickens.

Any suggestions or/and ideas would be greatly appreciated. Since it's been about 40 years since having chickens when I was a kid.

also, any books/magazines/etc. suggestions that would be a good read - would be great too.

Mine was built by a man (my hubby) so no plans were involved But I can say that there are a ton of easy coop plans out there. (not o suggest you go to another forum but they have a TON of plans) try www.backyardchickens.com Hope this helps! You can also pick up just about any chicken magazine at barnes and noble. They almost always have different plans. But some of those can get very elaborate.

As far as cold winters, as long as you can close them up at night but leave ventilation at the top. Keep bedding in there and use the deep litter method, the will do just fine. Also keep feed and keep them hydrated! That's how they regulate their body temperature.

Good Luck!

I have a post of our coop in the "Coops & Runs" It has a short video of what we added to our coop. Also I saw some others make the chicken coops out of pallets.

We looked into one of the prefab chicken coops but to me they seemed a lil under constructed. The ones we saw in our local Coastal store looked like they were falling apart and all of the reviews I read seemed to confirm that they were cheaply made.

hey Jen,
As for magazines - is one better than the other??? I would have to order it online, because Barnes and Noble is over 2 hours away. I thought I found a good magazine, but it's no longer being published.

thanks

We have a store that has books on the subject and there are pre-fabs there as well.

Here is Pandas Coop. This site just started so we are waiting for all our members to come here and start writing articles. The article area is where people post all DIY's.

Hey kanakoschild, do you using kindle apps? I have a few books on building coops that I can let you borrow:) Just send me a private message.

Matt

It's kind of a crap shoot if you aren't there looking at it. But if you are going to do it online anyway, try amazon. They a lot of times have ebooks for free that have coop plans. I have downloaded several. But, it differs day to day what ones are free.

I built mine out of pallets. I had a plan in mind when I started and it just kinda morphed from there.

hey Matt,
thanks for the books - I greatly appreciate it. I downloaded them on my son's kindle - and his enjoying reading them.
thanks,