Three brown hens pecking at a sunlit lawn

What keeping hens involves

Open up, top up, collect, lock up

Mornings you open the coop door, check that the feeder and waterer are full, and look each hen over for a minute. Afternoons you collect eggs. At dusk the hens put themselves to bed on the roost and you close the door behind them. Once a week you rake out the droppings and add fresh bedding, and a few times a year you empty the coop and scrub it. Hens are flock animals, so three is the minimum. They lay best in their first two or three years.

Four ways to set up

First, the coop: buy it or build it

Ready-Made CoopA flat-pack coop goes together in an afternoon with a screwdriver. Most are smaller and thinner than the listing suggests, so it suits two to four hens and usually needs its wire and latches upgraded.

Start here

Count your hens first, then shop by floor area instead of the listing's bird count. Look for 4 square feet of indoor floor per hen and plan to add a larger run beside it.

Chicken Coop BuildingBuilding your own costs about the same as a decent kit and gets you a coop that is bigger, sturdier and sized for your yard. A weekend of basic carpentry is enough for a simple design.

Start here

Read the extension housing article, then sketch a coop sized at 4 square feet per hen with the roosts set higher than the nest boxes. Buy the hardware cloth before the lumber so the framing matches the roll width.

Poultry Extension: housing for small flocks

Then, two extras

Raising ChicksDay-old chicks are cheap, tame easily and come in far more breeds than adult birds. They need six weeks under heat indoors before they can move to the coop.

Start here

Set up the brooder indoors and run the heat plate for a full day before the chicks arrive. Order sexed female chicks so you do not end up with roosters you cannot keep.

Poultry ShowingExhibitors breed birds to a written standard and enter them at local and national shows, where a judge scores each one in its cage. Bantams are a common start because they need less room.

Start here

Go to a sanctioned show as a visitor and walk the rows of cages before you buy any birds. Ask an exhibitor of the breed you like where to get show-quality stock, because hatchery birds rarely place.

American Poultry Association: find an event

Open a card and add its gear to put that setup's lines in the kit. Picking one coop route takes the other one out. Chick gear and the show carrier go on top of whichever coop you choose.

A pale-yellow baby chick standing on a person's cupped hands — A chick a few days old

How to get started

Tick these off as you go

A wooden hen house with a red door, a mixed flock on the grass in front of it

Choosing or building a coop

Floor space, air and wire come first

Floor space

Allow 4 square feet per standard hen inside the coop and 10 square feet per hen in the run. Bantams need about half that.

Roosts

8 to 12 inches of perch per hen, set higher than the nest boxes. A 2x4 laid wide side up lets hens cover their toes in freezing weather.

Nest boxes

One 12-inch box for every four hens is plenty. They will all queue for the same one anyway.

Ventilation

Vents near the roofline, above roost height, stay open all year. Damp air causes frostbite and breathing trouble. Cold dry air does not.

Wire

Chicken wire keeps hens in but raccoons pull it apart. Use half-inch hardware cloth on every opening, fastened with screws and washers instead of staples alone.

Latches

Raccoons open hooks and simple slide bolts. Fit a two-step latch or clip a carabiner through each one.

Access

You should be able to reach every corner with a rake. A coop you can stand in, or one with a full-width cleanout door, gets cleaned more often.

Rules and health precautions

Local law: Many towns allow hens but ban roosters, cap the flock at four to six birds, require a permit, or set the coop 10 to 50 feet back from neighbors. Fines and forced rehoming are common when people skip this check.
Salmonella: Healthy-looking chickens carry it. Wash your hands with soap after touching birds, eggs or anything in the coop, and keep a pair of shoes that only goes to the coop.
Who should keep back: Children under five, adults over 65 and anyone with a weak immune system should not handle chicks or hens. Nobody should kiss or snuggle them.
Eggs: Collect daily, throw out cracked ones, refrigerate, and cook until the yolk and white are firm. Brush dirt off dry, or wash in water warmer than the egg just before use.
Avian influenza: Keep wild birds out of the feed and water, do not share equipment with other flocks, and report sudden deaths or several sick birds to your state veterinarian or the USDA.
Buying birds: Ask for stock from a flock in the National Poultry Improvement Plan, which tests breeders for diseases that pass through the egg.

Official health and biosecurity guidance

What trips beginners up

Predators find a new flock within weeks. Raccoons, foxes, hawks, neighborhood dogs and rats all test the coop, and one unlocked night can cost every bird.
Egg numbers swing. Pullets start with small, odd eggs, and laying drops or stops when daylight falls below about 14 hours and again during the fall molt.
Sexing is not perfect. About one sexed chick in ten turns out to be a rooster, so line up a plan for rehoming before you order.
Feeding too many treats. Scratch grain and scraps should stay under a tenth of the diet, or shells get thin and laying falls off.
Adding new birds straight into the flock. Hens bully strangers hard, so house newcomers beside the run for two weeks first.
Nobody to cover vacations. Hens need a visit every day, so find a neighbor who will trade the chore for eggs.

Brown hens crowded round a white hanging pellet feeder, seen from above — Hens at a hanging feeder

Where to learn more

University extension services publish the most reliable free material, and their shared poultry site has short articles written for small flocks. Your own county extension office can also tell you about local rules and disease alerts. For day-to-day questions, the largest keeper forum has years of searchable answers and hundreds of member coop builds with photos. If showing interests you, the national associations for large fowl and for bantams publish the breed standards and list shows by state.

Extension articles, a keeper forum and the show bodies

An orange-red hen held in a person's arms — A hen in the arms

How the kit is put together

The base kit is what every flock needs whatever it lives in: feed, a feeder, a waterer, oyster shell, bedding and a roll of hardware cloth. Housing is the largest cost and sits behind two options, a ready-made coop or the parts for building one, so pick one of them. The startup range above includes a coop and three hens. Chick gear is only for people starting with day-olds, and the show carrier only for exhibitors. After setup, three hens go through one 40-pound bag of layer feed about every seven weeks.

Six brown eggs on straw in a green wire basket — Brown eggs in a wire basket

Stock the coop

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the cart. Clicking a card selects it there. The first line, the hens themselves, is not something you buy online: they come from a feed store, a local breeder or a hatchery. Housing joins the kit once you switch on Ready-Made Coop or Chicken Coop Building, and Raising Chicks and Poultry Showing add their own gear.

The hens

essential · Livestock

Chickens are flock animals and a single hen does poorly, so start with at least three.

Not sold on Amazon · feed store, breeder or hatchery

Not sold on Amazon. Buy from a feed store, a local breeder or a hatchery whose flock is in the National Poultry Improvement Plan. Day-old sexed chicks usually run $4 to $8 each and started pullets $20 to $40 each.

Layer feed

essential · Feed

A complete layer feed with about 16% protein and added calcium is the whole diet for a laying hen. Each hen eats roughly a quarter pound a day.

budget

Nutrena Country Feeds 16% Layer Pellets Chicken Feed 50 Pounds

4.2(110)

$41.98

Backyard Chickens

What keeping hens involves

Four ways to set up

How to get started

Choosing or building a coop

Rules and health precautions

What trips beginners up

Where to learn more

How the kit is put together

Stock the coop

The hens

Layer feed

Poultry feeder

Poultry waterer

Oyster shell

Coop bedding

Half-inch hardware cloth

Poultry grit

Poultry wound spray

Ready-made chicken coop

Coop building plans book

Nesting boxes

Predator-proof gate latches

Brooder heat plate

Chick feeder and waterer

Chick starter feed

Poultry carrier

Automatic coop door