Saving money is important, whether you’re just getting started or getting more chickens, so building a chicken coop yourself is a great solution. Good ready built coops are expensive - and you will still have to assemble the pieces themselves, so find some well-produced plans and get going.

Its a great family project too. Depending on the ages of your children, they will be able to help building the chicken coop by doing something: fetching and organising the materials, telling you what to do next, assembling some of the pieces or even building the entire chicken coop.

At the outset it is the size of the flock that determines the type of coop. If you have, or plan to have, about three hens, then a chicken ark would be a good choice.

If you want your chickens to free range, you can let them out, but a chicken ark is designed to be moved around so the chickens get to range as you move it. The simple design includes a roosting area one end and run the other.

A larger hen house with a run is more like a weekends work, but still based on simple shapes, so easy to build. This is your answer if you have five to seven hens. You could even build both a hen house and an ark, so you have the chicken ark to move the hens around and to use if any of them are poorly.

If you have, or plan to have, a larger flock then you will need a bigger hen house. A pitched roof design with external nest boxes would be perfect and you could site it within a run if you are not able to let your chickens free range.

If you buy plans that include all three types of chicken coop, then you will really save.