How many roosters/How big of a coop?

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chasiekitten12

chasiekitten12

Chirping
5 Years
Aug 19, 2014
360
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How many roosters for 6 hens?
Can a coop be smaller if the chickens are free-range? (2-3 acres)
How big of a coop for 20 egg laying hens free-range?

Thanks in advance!
 
Here is my opinion, as to how I would do... 6 hens, 1 rooster is plenty. More roosters would cause fighting among them.
You have a very large area for free range, the coop is only for overnight housing and egg laying. You didn't say how large your coop is at present. If you wanted to up your numbers to 20 hens, then I would suggest you have somewhere about 6 to 8 nesting boxes inside coop. The chickens are not all going to be laying at the same time and they share facilities with no issues. At least my hens do. As to for overnight housing, coop should be big enough so all chicks have enough elbow room. Different configurations of perch options will translate to different amounts of floor space required as well as height inside coop.
 
Thanks for the help! Is 50 sg. feet enough for 20 hens.
I normally would do the 4 sq. ft. per chicken but, they are free-range.
Could it work with 2sq. feet? They are out from 6:15 until 8:30 or 9:00.
They only sleep in there.
Thanks!
 
I think you should be good. Most of their time is outdoors, Night time they go to sleep and not much activity. BEST SUCCESS TO YOU.
thumbsup.gif
 
I don't know what your winter weather is like where ever you are but you need to consider that chickens often will have nothing to do with winter, I am in northern WI and my flock absolutely hates snow, wind and inclement weather of all sorts and will not go outside even for food, so if you get those conditions you will need a larger area for them. Otherwise you can go as small as you want all it is going to effect is how often you have to clean, the smaller the faster it gets full off poop, and how well the birds get along, they will get crabby if cramped up too much. The rooster issue is more on the number of hens I don't like any more than 2 in my coop and I have around 40 hens, I have had more and had too much fighting and carrying on and the hens were over bred, too many missing feathers and cuts and scrapes to doctor. Even with only 2 roosters I always have a couple ratty looking hens, they always seem to have a couple favorites that get it worse than others.
 
I live in Michigan, with snow, and chickens aren't impressed with walking around in it. My coop has about five sq> ft. per bird, and 1/3 of the flock are bantams. They cope with indoors at times, but it's tight and NO WAY could it be more crowded. That's with a big run and free range most days too. Mary
 
Ditto on the climate considerations.

We've had bitter cold and wind and 24" of snow in the last week.
Chooks have stayed in the coop all day the last 4-5 days when temps were -4F to 10F.

I've got about 6 sqft per bird of floor space...plus another 2sqft per bird roost/boards space.
They're getting along OK with careful feeding regimes, but I wouldn't any want more in there.
 
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I am sure you are getting the general idea, that more space and less chickens will produce healthier, happier flocks. It really does not matter if we say "Oh this number will fit there." If you start having behavioral problems, you have too many for the space.

My 2 cents. It is not so much this space can equal this many birds, and therefore you can have this many birds year round. The numbers should fluctuate with the season.

What works very well for me, is what I call the base number. And that is my winter flock, that is the number I need to be at come the first of November. In the spring, I start adding chicks to the flock. The chicks are small, the day is getting longer, and they spend more time, close to 14-15 hours each day outside, out and about, seldom in the run. However, I never get a flock so big that they cannot be locked up in the run/coup for a couple of days. Predators are real problem, EVERYTHING likes to eat chicken. However, with good broody hens and a rooster, hideouts and multi level perches, a lot of birds can be in my set up for a few days, if I am going to be gone, or if a predator has begun to think that my birds are their easy food. I have had fair luck with locking up my birds for a few days and the predator will move on.

Come the fall, I begin to harvest excess birds, going down to my base number, the days are very short, and my birds are often to roost in December by 4:00 pm till 7:00 am making for a LONG period of time on the roosts. Less birds makes for more space per bird for these long periods of time.

So for my multi - generational flock, my numbers fluctuate with the seasons.

Mrs K
 
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