How tall do chicken coops need to be?

How much height and head room do you need inside the coop.

The height of a chicken coop is important for the long term health of your backyard flock. A taller coop allows for more air space and better ventilation. A taller hen house also means you can have higher perches which most chickens naturally favour.

Below: A taller coop allows for more light and sunshine to fall in the windows as this diagram helps to demonstrate.

A coop must be tall enough to give your chickens at least 18 inches of headroom above their heads. This means that for the average chickens a coops need to be at least 4 foot tall.

You may find your birds are banging their wings on the roof or walls if there is not enough head room leading to injuries.

The interior coop height is a significant factor in a chickens' welfare and will help reduce stress amongst the flock.

I went through a lot of stages of buying and building my own coop and even got some plans and built them to speck. Nowadays if I need a new hen house I always end up buying a garden shed. I have a company near me that supplies a 6 foot X 8 foot shed that is 7 foot tall at the apex at a very reasonable price, and they deliver.

What is the minimum height of a chicken coop?

The absolute minimum height for the inside of a chicken coop is three feet tall and if you have big chickens like Jersey Giants or Orpingtons you really need at least 5 foot.

The roosting bars need to be above the height of the nest boxes to stop the chickens using the nests to sleep in.

Taller is better as most backyard chicken keepers end up with more chickens than they started out with and more space in the coop helps when adding birds to the flock.

What is the maximum height of coop?

This is a bit of interesting question. Building a coop that is more than 9 foot or so tall is probably overkill for the average backyard flock.

Commercial chicken sheds are around 22 foot or so tall and tend to get longer as opposed to getting taller.

How tall should the inside of a chicken coop be?

Inside a chickens coop there must be at least 18 inches or 45 cm of head room above the chickens. Less than this could lead to injury or a buildup of moisture and ammonia in the coop.

It may seem like I plucked the figure of 18 inches out of thin air but here in the European Union the legal requirement is 45cm above the heads of the birds.

The actual dimensions you end up using and the criteria you use to decide how high to build your hen house will depend largely on your personal circumstances and finances and the space you have available.

Below: These sort of chicken coops are just too small and the nests are the same height as the roosts leading to fouling of the boxes overnight.

Walls must be so constructed as to provide warmth, dryness, and strength for the house. They should be free from cracks and crevices to prevent mites and lice from accumulating in numbers, hence being easily cleaned and disinfected.

How tall should a chicken run be?

The chicken run or pen need not be as tall and the general practice is to have the roof or covering of the run sloping so that any rain runs off and snow can be easily removed.