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

[mowin]

advice is always good, and I agree, they may do better with less. But my point is simply that encouraging or suggesting "no chickens" isn't very helpful advice if OP wants them and can find a way to keep them practically. It might not be about just what they can get out of the birds- poultry are fun to keep and can be enjoyable to be around

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think the argument against their plan for getting chickens is very sound. The OP may not have thought about all the pros and cons.

It's no different than us giving advice on a coop someone purchased that is way too small or poorly built. It's advice. It's up to the OP to do with said advice as they choose.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm late to this party.

50 birds is a lot of birds. (don't look at my signature) But if they are all in the same place, managing 50 - apart from the feed bill - is little different from managing 12.

Yes, a combination of chicken poop and a brown source (leaves, etc) CAN break down in a year to make some really good soil. My own experiences suggest its probably better to count on that happening in the coop than spread evenly over a broad garden space - but it will happen in either. Much faster in the coop due to the concentration of droppings, much slower in the garden area - particularly as bark/wood chips break down more slowly than the (mostly) leaves and twigs I use. Thicker the wood chip, slower the decomposition.

In terms of effective housing, I built this in a weekend. Hand tools and a generator, had to drag the materials in. Its (a) a little too small for 50 birds and (b) BADLY laid out for 50 birds. Its primary purpose is goats. My point in linking it is not to suggest what you should do, but rather that - with simple framing - you can created a very big space very easily for that many birds. Were I in your situation, I'd likely take inspiration from open air coop designs, make a long, moderately shallow building (with roosting bars on the long wall) in the form of a shed roof style pole barn and leave the other long face open to save on resources. Actual dimensions would depend on available area and off the shelf roofing options. I HATE cutting metal.

But because the whole front would be open, the back would not need to be particularly high and you could still walk in to rake or shovel it out - maybe 3' or 3 1/2' above the highest roosting bar (if you have open venting above, as I do. LESS, if you use a Woods-style design), while a shallow ladder design for the roosting bars themselves would allow you to pack a decent amount of chicken in to the "air pocket" at the back of the coop where its ventilated (above) but not drafty. Only winds blowing directly into the open face become a draft/rain/snow issue.

That's the theory - I don't have winter here, no winter weather experience, I can't offer guidance beyond that.

 

[Shadrach]

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...

Whoa....
Have you ever kept chickens before?
I don't want to be making with those negative vibes man and all that but...
You say you primarily want the chickens for their manure. Then you say you plan to free range them. How are you going to collect the manure?

If you free range them some are going to get injured and/or killed. How are you planning on handling finding a partially eaten chicken that's still alive. Could you kill a chicken?
You also mention that you will be keeping them in a large run. If that is the case they are not free ranging. Even a large run will be stripped within weeks with 50 chickens on it.

Chickens need regular health checks. Just checking 5 chickens properly on a regular basis can be a chore, that's ignoring any treaments you may have to administer in the event some are sick/mite ridden/need worming.

They are going to need feeding. Even if you did free range them they'll need feeding. Confined to a run they'll need feeding lots.
Take 100 grams of commercial feed as a baseline. for 50 chickens thats 5000 grams (5 kilos) a day. That's 35000 grams (35 kilos) a week. Roughly that's one and three quarter 20 kg bags of feed a week. In the UK that's roughly £60.00 per week!

Assuming you get mostly hens what are you going to do with a rough average of 280 eggs a week?

My advice; don't do this. It's a logistics, financial and chicken health disaster in the making.

 

[Hip Hillbilly Acres]

We live in Northeast Ohio, up on Lake Erie....

Wow, cool. I fled that area in 2010 for warmer digs.

 

[Corbin_Dallas]

The Usual Guidelines
For each adult, standard-sized hen you need:

• 4 square feet in the coop (.37 square meters)
• 10 square feet in the run (.93 square meters),
• 1 linear foot of roost (.3 meters),
• 1/4 of a nest box,
• And 1 square foot (.09 square meters) of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation, preferably located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on the roost.

These guidelines break down for very large flocks in very large coops, but,

50 birds would, theoretically, need:

• 200 square feet in the coop -- 10x20, 12x16, 8x25
• 500 square feet in the run -- 20 x 25
• 50 linear feet of roost
• ~13 nest boxes
• and 50 square feet of ventilation

Where, in general, are you? Climate matters, especially when it comes to housing.

At these numbers you should consider a small barn, a horse run-in shed, etc.

Can anyone add daily moved tractor recommendations (both broiler and layers) to this list? As best I can figure from 'youtube pros' it ranges from 3-4sq ft / bird. My tractor is currently at 8sq ft/bird and not sure I'd want much more density then that.

 

[3KillerBs]

Can anyone add daily moved tractor recommendations (both broiler and layers) to this list? As best I can figure from 'youtube pros' it ranges from 3-4sq ft / bird. My tractor is currently at 8sq ft/bird and not sure I'd want much more density then that.

The use of a tractor helps with the sanitation aspect of the space requirements but it doesn't help with the social behavior aspects.

Broiler housing is, essentially, a very large chick brooding facility so you have chicks' needs for space socially crossed with the sanitation needs created by the tremendous amount of poop that Cornish X generate.

Judging from the number of people who have tried it then reported changing to a stationary coop, tractoring layers seems to be one of those ideas that sound better in theory than in practice. The people who report success with moving their layers around seem to mostly be using a mobile coop and portable fence rather than a standard tractor.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Can anyone add daily moved tractor recommendations (both broiler and layers) to this list? As best I can figure from 'youtube pros' it ranges from 3-4sq ft / bird. My tractor is currently at 8sq ft/bird and not sure I'd want much more density then that.

I don't tractor, but my understanding (take this with huge mounds of salt) is that tractoring is often (particularly for Cx) quite dense (2-3 sq ft/bird), which is why the tractors have to be moved so frequently, and why its so critical that you know what greens your birds are being tractored over - because whatever it is, they are going to get hungry, and they are going to eat it. Tractoring for eggers is a bit less dense (4-5 sq ft/bird), but its still more akin to a mobile coop than a mobile run in terms of space alotted.

Many (certainly not all, but many) of us BYCers are used to offering our birds more space than is strictly required to meet minimum needs under intensive management conditions. I believe our birds are the better for it.

 

[3KillerBs]

minimum needs under intensive management conditions.

In part because that meeting those minimums only works under intensive management and we're not setup for that.

When reading some of the century-plus-old chicken keeping books available online I've noticed that our backyard practices and recommended minimums line up with what was commercial standards before the advent of forced air ventilation, automatic temperature controls, ammonia sensors, conveyor belt feeding, etc.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

In part because that meeting those minimums only works under intensive management and we're not setup for that.

When reading some of the century-plus-old chicken keeping books available online I've noticed that our backyard practices and recommended minimums line up with what was commercial standards before the advent of forced air ventilation, automatic temperature controls, ammonia sensors, conveyor belt feeding, etc.

Makes a lot of sense, really.

 

[NatJ]

When reading some of the century-plus-old chicken keeping books available online I've noticed that our backyard practices and recommended minimums line up with what was commercial standards before the advent of forced air ventilation, automatic temperature controls, ammonia sensors, conveyor belt feeding, etc.

I've noticed that too.

Judging from the number of people who have tried it then reported changing to a stationary coop, tractoring layers seems to be one of those ideas that sound better in theory than in practice. The people who report success with moving their layers around seem to mostly be using a mobile coop and portable fence rather than a standard tractor.

I've done it, some years ago.

The pens were 3 by 8 feet, and housed 6 layers each. That makes 4 square feet per chicken. It worked fine. Sometimes they were on garden beds (that's what decided the pen size), other times on the lawn, most often on patches of weeds near the garden. Sometimes they were moved each day, other times they stayed in one place for longer to kill the weeds thoroughly.

I had a pattern (for a few years) of the whole flock living a sturdy coop for the winter (no outside access-- this was Alaska.) Then for the summer, the adults moved to outside "tractor" pens, and the coop was used to raise new chicks for next year. The older ones were usually butchered in the fall, around the time the weather got cold, the older hens stopped laying to molt, and the new pullets started laying. Depending on how many there were, sometimes the adults got combined with the almost-grown chicks to stay for another winter.

I quit because I moved somewhere else, with different circumstances. If I move back to a suitable place, I will probably do it again.

Edit to clarify one point: the hens in the movable pens were not allowed out to wander around. They were confined to the pens 24/7.