Building a hen house
20 11 2006I’ve been asked if the hen house I’ve started to build is based on a particular design and, if so, where did the design come from.
It’s not built to a design, nor were the broody coop and temporary run I’ve built from scratch.
This is partly from a desire not to spend money on designs (most of the books on building hen houses have poor reviews) and partly because all the designs I’ve seen assume that you have enough money to buy new timber.
I used salvaged timber of all types and in all sizes so it would be almost impossible to build to a specifc design unless I was fortunate enough to find a collection of wood discarded by someone who was building a hen house and gave up.
Instead of using a design, I use the height of one of our Scots Grey cockerels as a starting point and add a little head space, to give a height of 700mm at the back and 750mm at the front (allowing for a sloping roof).
The depth is 800mm for the simple reason that the rear door opening on our Land Rover Defender is 840mm wide, so we can slide the house inside with 20mm to spare on either side. (Don’t forget, an external nest box will add to the depth - in our case I make them removeable.)
Length is 1000mm because a metre is an easy length to work with.
These dimensions give a nest box that’s about right for a cockerel and a pair of hens, or up to three hens of a medium size. As we intend using them for breeding boxes, that’s spot on.
Next, the nest box. I allow 200mm wide by 250mm deep by 250mm high for the internal dimensions, so I can fit a double box on the front of the house with another 100mm for timber thickness. This means the next box has to fit into a 500mm wide hole, so I slot it into one of the 1000mm sides and that leaves just enough space to put in an access door next to it.
If you’re building a house for laying hens, it’s worth putting a sheet of clear plastic in as a window above the nest box to help keep them laying in the darker months. If it’s a breeding house, then this is useful but not essential.
The pop hole should be cut in one of the two 800mm ends and, again the height and width of our birds as a guide, I use dimensions of 200mm by 200mm.
To construct the house, I build a series of frames from 2×2s, 2×3s or 2×4s -depending on what I have available. These have half-lap joints at the corners, glued with waterproof exterior glue and screwed.
The rectangular frames for the base (800mm x 1000mm), front (1000mm x 750mm) and back (1000mm x 700mm) are made first.
Now, you can be clever and cut the correct slopes on the tops of the frames so that the roof will sit flush to the wood but as this is a rough-and-ready house we won’t bother.
Screw the front and back frames onto the base. Then take three 850mm lengths of 2×4 and lay them across the front and rear frames (two directly above the sides of the base, one centre between them), allowing 25mm overhang to the front and rear.
Make a vertical mark where 2×4s touch the front and rear frames, then cut two L-shaped notches in each one (like a rafter sifting on a wall plate) so they now sit firmly on the frames and screw them into place.
You now have the basic frame for the hen house. This can then be clad with whatever you have available - I prefer tongue and groove boarding as it helps eliminate draughts but you can use plain planks and cover the gaps with thin wooden strips.
The door frame is another piece of 2×4 positioned vertically in the front frame. The next box attaches to two more 2×4s runnig from one of the front corners to the door frame.
The pophole can be either vertical - in which case you need another vertical 2×4 in the end wall - or horizontal - which means a horizontal 2×4.
Plastic runners can then be nailed to the frames to hold the wooden pophole. Don’t be tempted to make runners from grooved wood as the sides splinter and come off.
The roof is an inverted wooden tray that fits over the top of the frames. Take a piece of seven-play and cut it so it overhangs the front and sides, then nail a 2×1 frame around the edge to hold the roof in place when it’s on the house.
Cover the roof with roofing felt or corrugated iron, making sure you fold the felt or bend the iron down over the sides.
A perch can be fitted by running a 1000mm length of slightly rounded 2×4 down the centre of the house, about one-third of the way up.
Limewash the inside of the house (emulsions and gloss paint will seal the wood, trapping moisture behind the paint and causing rot), and paint the outside with animal friendly wood preservative - preferably one that’s breathable.
That’s about it!
I prefer to use bolts and screws for strength, but annular nails are also good as they stop the wood pulling apart.
Always, always drill pilot holes for screws and nails - especially if you’re using very dry salvaged timber and the dreaded electric screwdriver.
Make sure there are no draughts by sealing up any gaps with an exterior mastic, but make sure there is some way of ventilating the house in the summer. By far the easiest method is to prop the front of the roof up on a couple of small wooden blocks.
When you put the house in its location, sit it on four breeze blocks to stop the wood from being in contact with the ground. To deter rats, place the house on piles of breeze blocks (about three blocks high) and provide the birds with a ramp.
What was interesting was that when we measured the chicken house we bought on Sunday, we found it almost exactly matched the dimensions I’ve been using.
It is about 50mm wider so it won’t fit through the back door of the Land Rover, while the nest box and roof are permanently fixed.
Other than that, it’s built very much like the one I have in progress in the workshop.
The top pictures of your hen house look really similar to the one we have, however we were thankfully able to bypass all of the building by simply recycling a hutch that my little sister had once used to keep the odd rabbit or guinea pig in. We attached two wheels to one end of the hutch, and a handle on the other end, and this makes it easy to move if you’re on your own. In the enclosed part of the hutch we screwed in a roosting pole, and we keep a recycled seedling tray filled with straw in there too, as a bed for them to lay eggs on.
The allow the chooks to walk in and out of the hutch as they wish, we cut the far wired end off, and attached a vertical metal track/retainer on either side of the opening. We then made a square wire ‘door’ (with the wire we cut away) that we can easily slide down into the track.. (kind of akin to a guillotine, though with the ‘door’ not attached to anything, if that makes it easier to picture!). Simply holding the ‘door’ in your hands, lining it up in the vertical metal track, and then pushing/sliding it down, encloses the hutch, keeping the chooks in and the predators out.
The beauty of using a rabbit hutch like this is that the entire thing is enclosed with wire (including the bottom, because rabbits can dig!) so there’s no possible way for foxes and other predators to get in. It’s also quite easy to clean - we just clear out any manure that’s gathered in it every morning (which we add to our liquid manure brews) and then hose it out with a watering can - with the water and any remaining dirt, manure, etc., falling through the mesh floor, allowing the hutch to dry out by the end of the day.
The hutch houses our three chooks quite comfortably. Due to its small size we wouldn’t put any more in it, tho we find that three chooks is more than sufficient for our needs (they lay, on average, 3 eggs per day).
The hutch is positioned in a small fenced-off area of the backyard, which allows us to open the hutch during the day and let the chooks out to range. At night time they independently go back in to the hutch and roost together, after which time we go out and slide in the door, and say goodnight!
My family got the hutch for free intially, so it has turned out to be quite an economical way of keeping chooks. We rent, too, so the convenience of being able to easily clean and move it has also been a plus.
Oh, I forgot to say, the entire hutch is made of metal sheeting and wire, not wood.
And also thought to add that I think that, for memory, we made the modifications to the end of the hutch for a few reasons - 1) our chooks were ex-battery hens and didn’t have a lot of strength to jump up out of the hutch, so the end-opening allowed them to walk out instead, 2) We thought it would be easier to clean out the litter, because we could tip the hutch on its end and hose the bottom of the hutch, with all the litter falling out rather than having to be partially taken out by hand, 3) It has also had the added benefit of allowing us to easily put a sheet of corrugated iron over the top of the hutch when it rains, extending the chook’s undercover area without blocking off their entry to the hutch.
I think that this set up would be a plus, too, if you have quite young chickens that weren’t able to jump out easily to range.
Cheers!
hay man love the site im living in ireland
I should have mentioned that the first photo is of a broody coop. it’s made in a similar way to the hen house but much smaller as it only takes a hen and up to six chicks. It needs to be moved every couple of days as the integral run is small.
Hiya Stoney -
nice hen house! Only thing I’d point out though, I wouldn’t recommend using felt as a roofing material under any circumstances, as it’s the ideal harbour for the dreaded Red Mite. When I first started keeping hens I didn’t know this; & we ended up having to burn our makeshift henhouse, things got so bad beneath the felt. And our first hens were Black Rocks, which are supposedly Red-Mite resistant. Perhaps it’s that much colder up North, you don’t have such serious problems with the little blighters?
I’d much more recommend something like Onduline - although with a mesh barrier on the inside to cover any exposed grooves, as otherwise vermin can infiltrate - in our ‘Fort Knox’ house we lost several goslings last year to goodness knows what, but it was small enough to squeeze in & bite the chicks’ heads off. Yuk.
It’s never as simple as “felt bad”, “onduline good” (or any other alternatives). I’ll have to see if I have any photos of the Onduline roofing we first used. It shattered in a gale. I’ve now acquired some old and heavy corrugated iron sheets, but in the meantime felt over marine seven-ply was the best compromise (although a commercial hut we have lost its felted roof to a gale, too).
There’s no point in having a roof if it can’t withstand gales and, so far, we haven’t had a red mite infestation. On top of that, changing the roof would make little difference when our huts are made from salvage and are riddled with gaps, cracks, nooks and crannies where mites can hide.
Must dash, things to do.