Solar Backyard Chicken-Coop Building Plans

Reader Contribution by Steve Maxwell
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We’ve kept chickens on our Manitoulin Island homestead since 2002, and experience has taught me something that no one made clear to me beforehand. When it comes to chicken coops, a handful of smaller, semi-portable coops are better than one large, permanently anchored house. I call this approach “modularity”, and I’ve worked this ideas into some free plans you can download. 

The big problem with permanent chicken houses is that they’re always troublesome and expensive to build. Lack of flexibility means they offer no chance to reduce or expand flock size, either. You’ve got what you’ve got when it comes to coop size. Keeping chickens in one place in a permanent coop turns that area of your yard into a dusty, vegetation-free wasteland. Permanent coops are also difficult to heat with winter sun – an issue that really matters where I live in Canada.

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