Does Coop height affect # of chickens?

[patandchickens]

Yes, but chickens will enjoy a 4 or 6' high run a LOT more than a 2' high one. They like to stretch tall, flap, hop, even fly a little... indeed sometimes they feel they *need* to, to get away from each other.

As far as deciding on a design to build, it will be a great deal more pleasant and non-back-breaking for you to work in if you build the run 6' tall. You *can* bend over to catch birds, rake poo, etc in a 4' high run, but you'd better be young and fit and stay that way, and you still won't like it. If your run is any shorter than that, make sure you design in a way for you to access all of it in order to catch birds, retrieve items, clean, etc etc.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[countrybum]

Nellabean, my coop is 7 - 8 ft high in the front and 6 - 7ft in the back and 10x10 square. My coop has different levels of perches, but they all seem to squeeze up on the top and it holds 50+ chickens comfortably.

 

[sillybirds]

Like cockadoodle says, you can get more square footage out of a taller coop if you make an additional floor. It's more trouble if you do it that way, but if that's your only option, then it can be done. I did that with my coop, and added a roosting "loft" which I figure gives me about 1/3 more square footage. Like Pat said, even though there is more than one roost, they all want to crowd on the top one.

 

[Akane]

Fish tanks are entirely different. One of the major constraints to a fish tank is water quality. The more water you have the easier it is to keep the water quality up even if the fish aren't directly in that water. Adding large filters and sumps that are within a certain percentage of the tank can allow someone to increase the number of fish kept even though they can't swim in that water. I hooked a 10g sump to a 20g tank so that it was cycling about 30gallons instead of 20 making it so the water volume could hold the same amount of fish waste and respiration as a 30g. That doesn't work in a coop because it is not an enclosed system. It would be like if the air in the coop is the only air your chickens get to breathe and there is no ventilation. You would have to have a large enough coop to hold enough air for the chickens to breathe easily and the ammonia from their waste not to build. Since we don't have that problem more height does not have the same impact as it does in a fish tank.

The problem I see with factoring height is first the birds still needing room to move around on the floor of the coop when coming, going, and eating or drinking. The other is the fact birds will want to roost on the highest roost possible. They will all still cram onto the highest roost. Mine are so picky about only taking the high roosts that the ones which don't fit will actually try to roost on the walls before using a roost 6" lower. Going higher does not gurantee they will use the space. You are more likely to just have all your chickens either crammed at the top for sleeping or crammed at the bottom for eating, going in and out, and avoiding bad weather. They aren't going to nicely spread out for you from top to bottom like you'd hope. Again a reason why the fish tank example doesn't work is also because we pick fish that occupy different levels of the tank. Some fish nearly always stay at the top, some fish nearly always stay at the bottom, and some fish wander through the middle so we can stock from top to bottom and not have the fish get in each other's space. Chickens will all want to be in the same spot and on the same level at the same time.

 

[cockadoodle]

Nope, not entirely different at all the way I look at it. The analogy worked for me at least...

Each bird (or fish) needs x amount of space and you aren't supposed to consider the height of the tank, or the coop when determining the amount of chickens (or birds) you can safely house. That was the point. Not entirely different at all

You are talking about water quality tho, and how you can over engineer the air and filtration system to get more fish per square inch into your tank. I'm sure that works to a degree, but at some point, regardless of how clean your water is, your fish will just start eating eachother due to over crowding. Overcrowding in this context has little to nothing to do with air, or poop and everything to do with the physical space required per bird / or fish to be happy. If you want 30 gallons worth of fish, I'd reccomend getting a 30 gallon tank, same arguement applies to chickens. Right size for the job and you don't have to over engineer parts of their world to compensate for that lack of space.

Cheers

 

[flopshot]

the aquarium analogy is very good allthough for different reasons. it's the surface area of a tank along with water movement that determines quantity and size of fish. a 55 long can handle more fish than a 55 tall.
seems the same thing applies with square footage for the chickens only it's about crowding and contamination concentration instead of oxygen exchange.

" I mean seriously, if you have a 2ft by 2ft 'chicken tower' that went up 30 feet in the air, you could certainly house more than 1 bird in there, right?"

i did get a chuckle seeing that in my mind's eye.

 

[Akane]

You mentioned someone keeping lots of healthy fish in a tall tank as an example and I would assume that is an example of adding more height allowing more animals. I gave the reasons why it worked with fish to a point but not with chickens. You do not save overcrowding when adding height to a coop but you do solve many of the contrictions of keeping fish by just adding more water whether it is up or not even in the area the fish can swim. Fish survive some serious overcrowding. All standard tanks are overcrowded really. People use tricks like just adding more water volume, more filters, more water changes, etc... to overcrowd pretty much any tank. If you really give a fish as much space as they can happily use like we do chickens you sure wouldn't have many fish. I've done balanced tanks where water changes and filters were not needed. The result is about 3 small fish in a 20g full of plants or maybe a dozen small fish in a 55g with none of the major waste producers like plecos. Just adding height to a tank actually can lower how many fish you can keep by lessening the oxygen exchange and water movement through the tank along with the fact that keeping big fish is most restricted by the width of the tank. Adding height does not help an oscar when it's in a tank too narrow to turn around in. The logistics of fish tanks is entirely different from the logistics of chicken coops.

 

[cockadoodle]

I think I understand the confusion now.

" I would assume that is an example of adding more height allowing more animals. "

That wasn't my point at all. This whole time I've been saying the opposite... that the verticle space in the coop has little bearing in how many birds it could safely contain. I used the tall fish tank as an example of this fact... that you cannot add more fish because of height alone, and the same applies to chickens. I think for the most part we are saying the same thing for the most part but if not, that's cool too.

Have a good one...
Mark

 

[pkeeler]

There are three limiting factors to the number of chickens.

1. Your view on how many chickens per sq. ft. of floor space. If you think 1 sf is enough, you could put chickens in individual 1'x1'x1' cages and stack them up. Like a commercial facility.

2. Sq. feet of floor space. If you want your chickens to have 4 sf of floor space, then height does not matter. You could put in lofts, which would increase floor space.

3. Roost space. You need ~1' of roost for every standard chicken. You can increase roost space by laddering. The higher your coop, the more you can ladder. So, a 8x8x2 coop, might only have roost space for maybe 12-18 birds. But a 8x8x6 coop could have roost space installed for 18-24 birds. Actually, the horizontal effects this more than the vertical, but increasing the vertical helps if there is enough horizontal room.