Wes, Onduline/Ondura is what I used. I like it a lot. Very easy to install, and I think it has the added benefit (for livestock) of not being so loud in the rain. However, I love the tin roof on my house, and would be pretty sad to have it muffled my the Ondura, LOL.
Are you talking about the Forsham coops? I do love those. But I tend to distrust any company's marketing website as a real objective recommendation. After all, McMurray's recommend's the Chick-n-Hutch for four birds, and it's got a wire floor and is not even enclosed.
Here's a place in the US that sells the same products as what (I think!) you're talking about:
http://www.backyardfarming.com/prod_lenham.html . They're saying 25 hens in a 4 x 4 coop. It's just marketing-speak (probably not euro-speak), and they're basing it on the number of nest boxes and roosting space they have in the unit... not on the amount of space per bird.
I personally think these are extremely well designed units. (I wish they weren't so expensive), but ample space for the birds just happens to be a pet peeve of mine. I wouldn't put 25 birds in a 4 x 4 unit. I'd put 4, maybe 5. I've seen so many studies on rats and all sorts of animals that once you pass a certain threshold, they just get aggressive and fight. (Of course, it also may have to do with the fact that I need a lot of space myself. We moved WAY out, and live about two miles from a maintained road
)
I don't think 4 sq feet is an absolute, hard and fast rule, but I do think it's a good rule of thumb. I think Joel Salatin even recommends 5. As I said above, if there's access to a good run, and the birds aren't confined for long periods during the winter, you can do with less. But this is all just my opinion.
However, I don't think it hurts to be aware of the potential problems so you can know what actions to consider of something does come up.
What if you do get a 4 x 4 coop and put 25 birds into it, and it's always filled with an ammonia smell, your birds are plagued with respiratory problems, you spend 5 hours of your weekend scraping and cleaning the stinky coop, the eggs are dirty at the end of the week, often broken and eaten, and to top every thing off, they get leg mites and start pulling out each other's feathers? It would be easy to see all those things as separate problems. But if they all have one underlying cause, knowing that it may be overcrowding can help you to be aware of it so you don't just give up on chickens altogether as messy, stinky, mean, infested, unpleasant creatures, when if they're in more of a natural environment for them we all know they can be friendly, funny, heartwarming, individual (and sometimes maddening, of course) personable and easy pets.
Which is not to say, Shandea, that you will experience any of this grief since you have a nice run.
I just find that I harp like an old man on this point so much that maybe I should explain at least once why I do it, LOL.
But if this is the consensus, I will not try to keep all 4 in this coop if it won't be good for them. I can easily find another home for one of them... although I will be sad.
