Chicken and yard question!

[amanda_dedi]

I have a question. I live on an acre and a quarter of property and I have 15 chickens and 2 turkeys living in my coop. The dimensions are:

Length - 15ft x 4in
Width - 11ft x 3in
Height - 10ft

My chickens are free range, so they are let out every morning to go do what they want around the entire yard, and at night they return to their coop. Same with the turkeys.

Now, I was wondering how many chickens I can have at the most on my property.

~Amanda

 

[Nichole77]

Please take this too the math forum. lol
I have no idea.

 

[amanda_dedi]

Ha!...wait. Is there really a math forum?? I tried to average it, but I've never been good at math. I thout maybe somebody who has a similar property to mine might help.

 

[Alexis]

Now this is just me talking, but I say you can have however many you want!

Your coop is about triple the size of mine and I keep 20 girls and 2 boys in there. Now when the other 15 grow up - you can bet I'll be making other accomodations.

 

[amanda_dedi]

wow. I think i'll be heading to Red Barn feed and supply faster than I thought. I like my little mixed breeds though. I can't wait to see how my Barred rock x blue cochin chicks turn out! So I imagine I can get quite a few in my coop. This is good news!

 

[Alexis]

I should have also said that you'll need to have adequate roosting space for more chickens and there are certain dimensions for that kind of stuff. We had to add in roosting space, and put our nestboxes (and more of them) in an attached area on the outside of our coop when we adopted ours. I'd love to have more room for them, but they seem pretty cozy at night, and no complaining from them!

 

[amanda_dedi]

For roosting we have wooden sticks(the kind you buy. kinda like broom handles) and one is about eleven feet long and the other(for the minorities lol) is about four feet. We have six large nesting boxes also.

 

[CoyoteMagic]

4 sq ft per chicken IN THE COOP--41.25 chickens

Now in the yard I think it's like 6sq ft. per chicken.--need measurements of the yard

Don't know about the turkeys

 

[amanda_dedi]

Thank you!

 

[Alexis]

A roost for minorities?! HAHA!

I'd probably look into adding another roost if you were to get many more chickens.

I believe the nest box ratio should be about 4 hens per box (although try telling my hens that - they all like the same four boxes and they have nine to choose from).

If I were to go by the equation of 4 sq ft per chicken in the coop, then I could only have four chickens! It has a lot to do with how they USE the space... in my case they only use the coop for sleeping and getting to the nestboxes once a day so I make sure they have lots of roosting area.

How do your turkeys do with the chickens? Our chickens came from a farm that had a turkey that lived with them, and we were supposed to get her too, but she stayed behind for awhile. I kinda wish we had a turkey.