How to Make a Backyard Chicken Coop for Cheap

There’s no need to buy a coop when you can design your own DIY chicken coop.

Most anyone with a backyard can have a few chickens.  They are easy to raise, inexpensive to feed and will provide your family with fresh eggs.   We started out buying a coop from the local farm supply store but it quickly started breaking down.  It wasn’t sturdy enough to last more than a few years without maintenance.  So, my husband and I built this DIY chicken coop mostly out of scrap wood.

The floor is made from 2 pallets we had laying around. We covered the pallets with plywood.   The walls are scrap wood from the local saw mill. The nesting boxes are scrap wood from another project.  A typical nesting box is 9×12.  Then we nailed branches on the inside so the chickens have a place to roost at night.


On the other side we bought a piece of plexiglass from Home Depot for the window.  Then made this hinged down door to provide easy access to the eggs.


For the past few years we’ve let our chickens free range but over the winter we lost 15 birds to predators.  So we decided we were going to have to pen them up and let them free range a few hours a day instead of all the time.  So my husband built this 12x12x4 pen attached to the coop.

Its made from simple 4×4 posts and 2×4 lumber.  We covered it with chicken wire but first dug a trench around the bottom.  We layed barbed wire in the trench and attached the chicken wire to it.  Then we covered the barbed wire with dirt.  This will hopefully keep predators from digging under the fence. A simple door was made, hinges and lock attached. We also covered part of the fence with a scrap piece of metal roofing so the birds can still get outside in bad weather.

On one side we attached our feeder bucket.  Its a 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled around the bottom and a pan attached so the feed will automatically drop thru the holes.  This feeder has worked well for us for years. If you’d rather purchase one, here’s something similar on Amazon.   I only have to fill it every 7-10 days depending on the number of birds.  I usually keep at least a dozen.

Next we found this water bucket at the local feed store.  It already had chicken water nipples attached. Here’s one on Amazon.   To make it easy for us to fill my husband attached this pvc pipe.  This is mess free and easy peasy. I only have to fill it once or twice a week.


So that’s our coop.  Hope this was helpful for you.  Maybe it will inspire others to try their hand at raising a few backyard chickens and make your own DIY coop.  Happy farming!

Learn More

If you are interested, make sure to check out the Homesteaders section on Amazon. Here, you can find books and guides on how to easily homestead and tips on how to do it better.