Choosing the Right Chicken Coop for Your Needs
Backyard chicken coops are growing in popularity, and some Bucks County, Pennsylvania, homeowners want to start bringing the countryside to their homes. You’ll want to buy a chicken coop that will keep your flock safe and healthy. Bristol Sheds’ chicken coops come in all shapes and sizes, perfect for just starting out or if you’re an experienced chicken raiser. Here are some guidelines for choosing the right chicken coop for your needs.
Chicken Coop Sizes
Your chicken coop size will be based on the number of chickens in your flock. Our chicken coops are fully customizable to accommodate any number of chickens. Having the right-sized coop will keep the temperature regulated inside for the number of chickens you have. In our experience, we’ve found that you should have around 2-4 square feet of space in the coop per chicken, and 10 square feet in the run area per chicken. If you overcrowd your chicken coop, the chickens can become stressed, leading them to peck at each other and develop health issues. You’ll also have to determine how many nesting boxes you’ll need inside the coop. We recommend having one nesting box per six to eight chickens.
Chicken Coop Styles
At Bristol Sheds, we offer a few different styles of chicken coops for you to choose from, depending on your needs and stylistic preferences. All of our styles have proper ventilation installed to make your chickens more comfortable and remain healthy. Our A-Frame, Quaker, and Gambrel styles are perfect for homeowners with small yards who are limited in where they can place their coop, especially if they live in a city like Philadelphia.
A-Frame Chicken Coops
Our A-Frame chicken coop is a simple homestead structure that will match any home’s aesthetics. The triangular roof allows for proper ventilation and easy cleaning. It also provides more wall space to add perches for your chickens to sleep on.
Quaker Chicken Coops
Our Quaker chicken coop has a roof that overhangs the siding, providing extra protection against weather elements when you are collecting eggs. These coops also have an elevated hen house, making the structure more accessible, shelters from floods, and protects against predators.
Gambrel Chicken Coops
Our Gambrel chicken coop has a stylish barn-like roof that adds a rustic character to your backyard. This style also has a taller roof to add more perches. In your chicken coop, there should be enough perches to accommodate the entire flock.
Combination Chicken Coops
Combination chicken coops are our specialty. This style merges hen houses with chicken runs, perfect for people who have a larger flock of chickens. They are lockable and secure, allowing your chickens to safely graze outside without worrying about predators getting them. The run is the perfect area for your chickens to roam and eat foliage. The hen house is elevated so predators can’t dig inside, and it makes cleaning easier.
Movable Chicken Coops
Our movable chicken coops have wheels attached to them so you can move the structure to different areas of your yard. They allow you to rotate your chickens’ grazing sites without compromising safety and shelter. You can move your coop to a fresher pasture that will provide your chickens with fresh foliage to eat and fresher grazing areas. This will keep your yard healthy and prevent it from being overworked. We would recommend these chicken coops for homeowners with large yards and in areas with lots of rainfall, like Pennsylvania.
To learn more about our styles, check out our Complete Guide to Backyard Chicken Coop Styles blog.
Customization Options
Here at Bristol Sheds, we offer many customizable options for our chicken coops to better suit your needs. We can include easy clean nest boxes, automatic doors, feed rooms, cupolas, no-waste chicken feeders, and more to increase style and efficiency. When building your coop, we recommend customizing it to include a window for natural light. This will improve the overall environment inside the coop and encourage egg production.
Protection Against Predators
A chicken coop must be made with sturdy materials, with secure locked doors and fitted mesh or hardware cloth to prevent predators from breaking in. Common predators for chickens in Pennsylvania are foxes, coyotes, hawks, raccoons, weasels, and owls. We build our chicken coops with the threat of predators in mind, using materials and craftsmanship that will protect your chickens. If protection against predators is the utmost priority to you, we recommend building a Quaker chicken coop. They are best suited to protect against predators as they are fully elevated off the ground.
Get a Chicken Coop with Bristol Sheds
All of Bristol Sheds’ chicken coops are ventilated, easy to clean, and protected against predators. They are made with premium materials to ensure they can withstand Pennsylvania’s weather conditions and last for decades. If you’re ready to start raising chickens, view our chicken coop catalog or our in-stock inventory to start building a coop perfectly tailored to your requirements. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you!