Predator Proof Chicken Coop DIY

We've got one of the best predator proof chicken coop plans. This portable predator proof chicken coop DIY is low-cost and easy to make for just about anyone.

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We’ve got one of the best predator proof chicken coop plans. This portable predator proof chicken coop DIY is low-cost and easy to make for just about anyone.

Having a few laying hens in the backyard has almost become the icon of today’s self-sufficiency movement. Birds kept in a portable chicken coop on pasture provide delicious, inexpensive eggs, and eggs from birds that get plenty of grass, bugs and seeds to eat are better for you than store-bought eggs (read the results of our egg nutrition testing in The Good Egg). Hens are great converters of kitchen waste into valuable manure for the garden, and every chicken owner we know takes a lot of pleasure in just watching the chickens noodle around in the yard.

But free-range birds are often taken by foxes, bobcats, hawks, dogs or other predators, so unless you have guardian dogs that can keep predators away, your best option is probably a portable chicken coop that gives the chickens access to fresh grass and dirt every day while also keeping them protected.

Over the years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has offered several DIY chicken coop plans, particularly designs for portable chicken coops. It has been a challenge. The perfect coop should be lightweight and easy to build — even for a child or an older person — yet it must be sturdy enough to keep predators away from the birds, and it shouldn’t cost too much money.

One early version, designed in 2003 by MOTHER EARTH NEWS contributing editor Steve Maxwell and Editor-in-Chief Cheryl Long, was a wooden A-frame affair with wheels on one end to help make it easy for one person to move. Created after Maxwell and Long conferred with poultry experts, the coop is a gorgeous piece of work (read more about it in MOTHER’s Mini-Coop) meant to last for years. However, the coop requires a fair amount of carpentry skills to build, and the cost of the materials and the required tools are beyond some folks’ budgets.

  • Updated on Feb 5, 2023
  • Originally Published on Jan 13, 2021
Tagged with: DIY chicken coop, Portable Chicken Coop
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