how much space per chicken

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now i am worried and thankful for this thread. I have 4 birds a 4ftx10ft run and a coop that is 4ftx4ft... we have smaller yard and i will let them out into the yard a few times a week for a few hours but i worry about the neighbor dogs getting them so i can't let them out much more than that. will this work? do i need to get rid of one or two of my girls? I want really happy chickens. last time we had chickens our yard was 3/4 acre and there was an orchard to roam in and a garden to eat and they were sooooo happy. fig trees pears apples berries plums cherries they were in chicken heaven. but here it is just a plain grass yard with a few very tall pine trees and i cant risk them getting into the neighbors yard. so i was going to keep them in the 10x10 run and 4x4 coop. but now reading about all the space they may need to be happy i am worried. I was not trying to cram a bunch of girls into a small space I too was going by the chicken math from here on the BYC. do you think they will be okay? thanks
 
mike001 said:
It seems humans need less room than chickens. I should just move out of my house, give it to them, and live in the coop.
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The problem is that chickens are VERY destructive of their environment when confined. In Nature, they are terrestrial forest birds, and they roam widely across the landscape.
But when confined, their usual habits of scratching, shredding and pooping** leaves their confined keeps looking like festering moonscapes in a short time.
Humans, by contrast, have sense enough to regulate their activities and bodily functions - well, the vast majority do.




** (70% of everything they consume comes out as manure)
 
I apologize that I was not clear on coop space versus run space. I should have said take the length and width of the "coop" floor and multiply those two numbers, then divide by 5. Take your length and width of "run" ground, multiply and divide by 15. The lessor of those two answers is the number of birds you can have.

For example you have a 5x7 coop = 35 divided by 5 = 7 birds (full size layers or breeders)
but if your run was only 8x10 = 80 divided by 15 = only 5 birds

So you need to take the 5 as the answer for number of birds. It does not matter if the coop can support 7 if the run only supports 5

essentially my rule is 5 and 15, most people go by 4 and 10. I tried 4 and 10 for a long time even letting them free range several hours a day 5 days a week ....you would be surprised at how much a little extra space cuts down on poop build up among other things in the coop (remember chickens poop 80% of what they are going to for the whole day while sitting on the roost)

Just as Davaroo has stated....you become a waste manager along with flies, lice, mites, rats, and everything else that chicken waste attracts. I know people that spend 300.00 a year or more just on shavings on a handful of birds due to over crowding.
Even with my 15 rule in the run, that is still taking into consideration they get some sort of time outside that run a few times a week. I think Davaroo's research indicated about 88 sq. ft per bird on the range....I had indicated about a 100 on the range. I think we are pretty close. I know that is a bit different talking about rotating paddocks and such....but it is a good indicator none the less.

On the two story coops question.... I have yet to see any work well, that is why I said that. If someone has come up with a better design to stack chickens in a two story...then I digress. Shelves almost never work either. The only time they would consider using a shelf is for roosting. Your asking for a load of foot problems if you do that most of the time.

In the end though, this is only my opinion from my experience over time. So I do apologize for sounding a bit "off" this morning.
 
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by your math I should only have 2.6 chicken in my 4x10 run and 3.2 chickens in my4x4 coop. ahhh I have four ladies. So If I rehome 2 of my chickens they should be fine. I can not give them any more space than that other than a few hours a day in the yard which is kinda small. i wish i would have seen this thread before doing my chicken math using the BYC standard math. you make a lot of sense. I really want a little urban coop with fresh eggs but not to the detriment of the ladies.
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they are still indoors in the brooder perhaps they will be easy to rehome.
 
Why don't you rehome just one of them and see how 3 girls do in your space? Sounds like a better solution to halving your flock, which I'm going to have to do on a much larger scale than you. I have 15 2.5 week olds and need to get down to, at the most, 9ish.
 
I think I understand how the 2 story does not work. You have a 4x4x 8 foot tall coop with a shelf in the middle, but all the poop still drops down to the 4x4 lower floor, so while they may have twice the walking space the immediate ground is till collecting poo from all the birds all the birds.....provided you are using a mesh floor on the second tier. If you get say, 8 birds in there, the 4x4 ground floor will be collecting double the amount of poo if you go by the safe calculations. Does that make any sense?
 
Jkioneil said:
by your math I should only have 2.6 chicken in my 4x10 run and 3.2 chickens in my4x4 coop. ahhh I have four ladies. So If I rehome 2 of my chickens they should be fine. I can not give them any more space than that other than a few hours a day in the yard which is kinda small. i wish i would have seen this thread before doing my chicken math using the BYC

And here is where the real harm of the "more is better" mentality comes in. You were perfectly happy, your chickens were destined for a happy, easy life, but now you see someone on the internet up the ante from 4 to 5 square feet so suddenly, you are a horrible chicken slum lord and you must give away your two chickens so that they don't have to be subjected to your evil ways. Only now, instead of being happy in your backyard paradise, they are going to go to some unknown place and likely end up upside down in a chicken cone at 11 months of age wondering where life went wrong.

Next year, some one is going to say, "Eight! Eight square feet per bird! I used to do five square feet per bird, but then I had to clean out the bedding every two weeks! I did not like that because my chickens were crowded! One even filed a lawsuit in state court. I now follow the eight square feet per bird rule in the coop and ten acres per bird outside the coop. My 4,000 sq ft home...I mean coop...houses 2 chickens, and they have room to run and play and watch HD tv. The other day one even kicked me out of the bathtub and filled it with sand! It was so happy!"

So now your 16 square foot coop is only good enough for 1 chicken. "Sorry, Henny, you've gotta go. You are not happy here, and Betsy Hen needs the extra room to...to...I don't know what for, but she needs it says the internets! Now come back here! This is for your own good!"

Of course then someone will say "Twenty! Twenty square feet per bird like in the olden days when cave men roamed the Earth and kept scaly green chickens that laid purple eggs!" And then you will give away your one remaining chicken because your coop is too small to hold even a single chicken.

I know a lot of people who keep chickens. None of them have 4 square feet per bird. Most have 3 or less. Their chickens have been healthy and happy for years. No disease, no cannibalism, no state law suits.

Yes, more is better. A chicken will be happier with 5 square feet than 4. It will be happier still with 6, 9, or 50. But if you're a good owner, take good care of them, they can be happy in almost any reasonable circumstance. There is a local farmer here with about 12 chickens. They live in 3 or 4 small things that look like rabit hutches, about 2'x 1.5' open mesh front boxes. They free range most of the day and huddle in the hutch things at night, 3 or 4 per hutch. I bet they're a hell of a lot happier than any chickens that have 10 sq ft per bird in a coop and 15 in a run. And I bet your chickens will be happier still, because you sound like a person who cares about animals.

The guy who got me into chickens has a 4x3 coop and a 10x12 run and has 5 full size hens and one bantam. They have been there over a year and they are perfectly happy and healthy. No pecking, no disease, no signs of unhappiness at all. That's a 12 square foot coop with 6 happy chickens in a space that the 4sqft rule says should only house 3 chickens, and the 5sqft rule, 2 chickens.

Please don't give away your chickens because someone gave you a number and some horror stories on the internet.
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I agree with Mike. I do know that I'll need to downsize my own flock by a few birds (perhaps go from 15 down to 11-12, but after that we'll wait and see how they do. Mike had a very good point that of course more is better but you can also have safe, happy, healthy chickens by taking good care of them. Take care!
 
mike001 said:
And here is where the real harm of the "more is better" mentality comes in. You were perfectly happy, your chickens were destined for a happy, easy life, but now you see someone on the internet up the ante from 4 to 5 square feet so suddenly, you are a horrible chicken slum lord and you must give away your two chickens so that they don't have to be subjected to your evil ways. Only now, instead of being happy in your backyard paradise, they are going to go to some unknown place and likely end up upside down in a chicken cone at 11 months of age wondering where life went wrong.

Next year, some one is going to say, "Eight! Eight square feet per bird! I used to do five square feet per bird, but then I had to clean out the bedding every two weeks! I did not like that because my chickens were crowded! One even filed a lawsuit in state court. I now follow the eight square feet per bird rule in the coop and ten acres per bird outside the coop. My 4,000 sq ft home...I mean coop...houses 2 chickens, and they have room to run and play and watch HD tv. The other day one even kicked me out of the bathtub and filled it with sand! It was so happy!"

So now your 16 square foot coop is only good enough for 1 chicken. "Sorry, Henny, you've gotta go. You are not happy here, and Betsy Hen needs the extra room to...to...I don't know what for, but she needs it says the internets! Now come back here! This is for your own good!"

Of course then someone will say "Twenty! Twenty square feet per bird like in the olden days when cave men roamed the Earth and kept scaly green chickens that laid purple eggs!" And then you will give away your one remaining chicken because your coop is too small to hold even a single chicken.

I know a lot of people who keep chickens. None of them have 4 square feet per bird. Most have 3 or less. Their chickens have been healthy and happy for years. No disease, no cannibalism, no state law suits.

Yes, more is better. A chicken will be happier with 5 square feet than 4. It will be happier still with 6, 9, or 50. But if you're a good owner, take good care of them, they can be happy in almost any reasonable circumstance. There is a local farmer here with about 12 chickens. They live in 3 or 4 small things that look like rabit hutches, about 2'x 1.5' open mesh front boxes. They free range most of the day and huddle in the hutch things at night, 3 or 4 per hutch. I bet they're a hell of a lot happier than any chickens that have 10 sq ft per bird in a coop and 15 in a run. And I bet your chickens will be happier still, because you sound like a person who cares about animals.

The guy who got me into chickens has a 4x3 coop and a 10x12 run and has 5 full size hens and one bantam. They have been there over a year and they are perfectly happy and healthy. No pecking, no disease, no signs of unhappiness at all. That's a 12 square foot coop with 6 happy chickens in a space that the 4sqft rule says should only house 3 chickens, and the 5sqft rule, 2 chickens.

Please don't give away your chickens because someone gave you a number and some horror stories on the internet.
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Thank you for posting this Mike. It does seem like there are a lot of different ideas for how many chickens you can keep in any given space and that there are just as many horror stories as they are success stories for the same amount of space. I am still in the research phase and do not have any chickens yet, but trying to find out what would be a good size coop and run has left me a bit confused. I plan to give my chickens as much time free range in our yard as possible, but I want them to have a big enough coop and run, that also protects them from predators, so that when my DH and I are working they aren't all "cooped" up.

We can have up to 12 fowl for our size property according to our city ordinances, so I was planning to start with half that as these will be the first chickens I raise on my own, but I wanted to make the coop and run big enough for 12 birds using the 4ft/10ft rule. That seems to be the rule I have seen the most. I will have the time to keep their coop and run cleaned out frequently to keep the poop build up down and the place in my yard where we plan to keep the chickens is high ground so when it rains there will be adequate drainage to help the ground dry out quickly.

Anyone else have an opinions or suggestions on this?
 

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