A question about space...

[Aurian]

Hi,
I'm new to the idea of keeping chickens & to the forum.I live in South Africa & I only have a space that is roughly 3 meters squared & would like to know about how many hens I can keep in that space without over crowding them.
Thanx in advance.
P.S. I'm considering keeping 2 dwarf rabbits with the hens in the same enclosure... ?

 

[CinnamonQueen12]

3 meters squared? Thats 9 square meters...(calculating in head.......grabbing calculator......realizing I can't do mental math...).....81 feet! wow! Thats a bit of space! Make your coop like a third of that and give the chickens the rest of the space for a run. Tops you can keep 13 chickens in there. Technically, its i chicken for every 6 feet of outdoor space and 1 chicken for every 4 feet of indoor space. Does that help? And for the rabbits, i wouldn't add them in with the chickens. If you really wanted to, you probably could, but make sure you raise the rabbits and chickens together from babies otherwise they could get nasty to each other.

 

[Aurian]

Thanx but it looks like a made a mistake in stating the size of the plot of land I have for the coop. It is 3 meters x 3 meters if that helps any.

 

[teach1rusl]

Would that be for the entire space (run and shelter) or just the shelter/housing???? That will make a world of difference in the number of birds.

 

[Aurian]

That is all the space I have for shelter and run.

 

[teach1rusl]

I would suggest no more than 6 birds in that space. I'm horrible with meters, but using feet instead, it has to be close to 80 something sq. feet of space. Most use at least 2-4 sq. ft of housing space plus 10 sq. ft of run space per bird as minimums...many give more space than that. That's how I came up with my suggestion. 4-5 birds would be even better.

 

[KDK1]

9 square meters=97 sq. ft

 

[Time-Out]

Quote:

The MAXIMUM number of birds I'd keep is 7.
Here are the calculations:
7 x 4 = 28
97 - 28 = almost 10 sqft of run space per bird.

It's almost perfect