When I first came up with the idea of becoming a urban chicken farmer I thought that the whole process would be relatively straight forward. Just buy some chicks, buy a chicken coop and feed the chickens my leftover dinner table scraps. I was mistaken! All these bits and pieces needed for a coop soon becomes too expensive.

I wanted to save cash so drew up a list to find where to save costs. The first was the chicken coop. I looked at the pre-built models and decided that they were way too expensive, so I decided to build my own chicken coop using a set of DIY chicken coop plans.

I searched the internet and found some free plans. However when I presented these to the owner of my local DIY store he laughed and said that I had better go back to the drawing board. I was really grateful for his advice as the coop bulit from these plans was unsafe. My main criteria when selecting which set of plans and guide to go for was the health and safety of my chickens. Next was how easy were the plans to read and did the plans come with step by step instructions.

There were so many sites advertising so many sets of chicken coop designs and chicken runs that I almost gave up! I was left really confused about all the information that sites on the web were offering. After buying a total of ten books. I swiftly got refunds for 7 of them!

I eventually narrowed down my selection to three guides that I have now reviewed in full on my website. I chose these three guides as they simply fulfilled the above requirements. If you really want to build a coop then they are invaluable.