Advice Please....Decided Against the Omlet and Want to Build a Coop for 50 Chickens

[Kiki]

Hi! I am cancelling my order for two OMLET's and have decided to build a COOP for 50 chickens instead. My reason for having chickens is to collect alot of manure for my garden. I'm a vegan and don't eat eggs or chickens . So, I'm trying to decide what would be a good Coop plan and would like some help to decide . They will be FREE RANGE chickens, kept safely (I hope) in the large fenced in area for them, and the Coop will of course be in that area as well. So, what do you all think. I want an EASY TO CLEAN coop...

Yaaayyyyy!

I'm so excited to see that you canceled the order!
Good job.

 

[littlecoopnextdoor]

I’d suggest starting with 10 chickens. Make everything a little bigger than you need (in case you add more in future). I think it’s more manageable to start with few and expand then to be possible overwhelmed by so many. I have three and I may get more but wanted my first chicken keeping foray to be positive and manageable. I’m also mostly interested in their compost (but I will eat the eggs).

Also please make sure you are feeding a balanced chicken food as well as what they get from your garden.

Oh yes! As another person said, make a plan for the eggs. You’ll be getting almost an egg per chicken per day which is a lot to store if you’re not eating them. Another reason to start smaller best of luck!

 

[aart]

The wood chips are like 6" thick

It's going to take a loooong time for that many wood chips to turn into good garden soil,
no matter how much chicken poop you add.

Rotting wood steal nitrogen from any plants grown in or even near them.
Just read a thread on a homesteading forum about a guy who used saw dust on his garden paths, killed all the adjacent plants with a day or two.

 

[TammyRoesch]

I’d suggest starting with 10 chickens. Make everything a little bigger than you need (in case you add more in future). I think it’s more manageable to start with few and expand then to be possible overwhelmed by so many. I have three and I may get more but wanted my first chicken keeping foray to be positive and manageable. I’m also mostly interested in their compost (but I will eat the eggs).

Also please make sure you are feeding a balanced chicken food as well as what they get from your garden.

Oh yes! As another person said, make a plan for the eggs. You’ll be getting almost an egg per chicken per day which is a lot to store if you’re not eating them. Another reason to start smaller best of luck!

My husband and I have a home business, I'm an herbalist and we ship health products - www.betterthangreens.com I wouldn't be shipping the eggs but alot of people in the area know us and I don't think I'll have trouble selling them.
I wish someone could tell me how many chickens I would need for 10,000 square feet garden....

 

[TammyRoesch]

It's going to take a loooong time for that many wood chips to turn into good garden soil,
no matter how much chicken poop you add.

Rotting wood steal nitrogen from any plants grown in or even near them.
Just read a thread on a homesteading forum about a guy who used saw dust on his garden paths, killed all the adjacent plants with a day or two.

I've been doing this wood chip garden for 5 years, and LOVE it. My son is a tree man and brings me LOADS of chips...and I spread them on the garden this thick every year.....it's worked very well for me...I put cut grass on top of the chips where the onions are.

 

[Battlepants]

For you planning to use the chickens for gardening purposes, I would suggest a chicken tractor and like 5 chickens (maybe multiple tractors with 5 each). What you do with these is park the tractor over the land that you want to use for gardening. The chickens will destroy all the vegetation, till the land and fertilize it on the spot. Then you move the tractor to the next spot and plant crops where they just were.

If built correctly, these chicken tractors can be a good place to live 24/7, but I'd probably still build them a "vacation home" coop to live when they aren't working the fields.

 

[NatJ]

I wish someone could tell me how many chickens I would need for 10,000 square feet garden....

Any number of chickens will improve the garden. Do you know how much manure your garden needs each year? Various online source tell me that hens produce about 130 pounds of manure, per hen, per year. Of course they also help compost the other materials available there, and you may be adding bedding too, so the total compost-per-chicken will be more than just their manure each year.

If you know how much nitrogen your garden needs each year, or how much of some other nutrient, you can look up the nutrients in chicken manure and calculate the right amount.

I would probably start with 10 to 12, and see how it goes. But if you really want to start with 50, you certainly can do that. If that turns out to be too many, you could presumably sell some of them as laying hens until you get the number down to what is right.

You might want a large amount of manure the first year to boost fertility, and then smaller amounts in later years to maintain it.

If you were willing to eat meat, or sell meat, I would recommend you try Cornish Cross meat chickens, raised for 8 weeks and then butchered. They will produce a lot of manure fast, and after the first batch you could decide how many batches you need each year to produce the right amount of manure.

 

[TammyRoesch]

Any number of chickens will improve the garden. Do you know how much manure your garden needs each year? Various online source tell me that hens produce about 130 pounds of manure, per hen, per year. Of course they also help compost the other materials available there, and you may be adding bedding too, so the total compost-per-chicken will be more than just their manure each year.

If you know how much nitrogen your garden needs each year, or how much of some other nutrient, you can look up the nutrients in chicken manure and calculate the right amount.

I would probably start with 10 to 12, and see how it goes. But if you really want to start with 50, you certainly can do that. If that turns out to be too many, you could presumably sell some of them as laying hens until you get the number down to what is right.

You might want a large amount of manure the first year to boost fertility, and then smaller amounts in later years to maintain it.

If you were willing to eat meat, or sell meat, I would recommend you try Cornish Cross meat chickens, raised for 8 weeks and then butchered. They will produce a lot of manure fast, and after the first batch you could decide how many batches you need each year to produce the right amount of manure.

Thank you....I just called a local farmer and he said I would need about 50 for this size garden..... Would make me sad to butcher them so I can't do that

 

[Battlepants]

Thank you....I just called a local farmer and he said I would need about 50 for this size garden..... Would make me sad to butcher them so I can't do that

You don't HAVE to butcher them, there are other options. For example, raise chicks in the spring, use them to work your field for a few months, sell the hens to people who want eggs but don't want to raise chicks, sell the roos to a butcher. Repeat yearly.

In fact, this setup may actually prove profitable as a good blooded laying hen can easily go for $25-30.

 

[NatJ]

You don't HAVE to butcher them, there are other options.

I think that was a response to my idea of Cornish Cross meat chickens as manure producers. They do produce large amounts of manure, but butchering is the only sensible thing to do with them. So if butchering is not an option, Cornish Cross are not an option.

For layer-type chickens, I agree that raising pullets and selling them once they start to lay could be a good idea.