how many chickens and run questions

[aclee]

my shift key is acting up...sorry...

I have a large shed that is 8 feet wide and 20ish feet long. dormered in the middle to 8 feet so nice and tall. we have 12 feet of it parted off as our chicken coop. Right now we have 37 meaties in there, but when they go I will have a laying flock. We plan to add a fenced area on the side with a covered run, that will be 11 X 13 but will also let them out to freerange most of the rest of the back yard daily, even in winter if they want to (not sure they will want to, but hopefully they will at least use the run since it will have less snow if it's covered.

How many chickens and turkey's would you house in there? The turkey's are midget whites so are only a bit larger than a standard chicken. I know I'm a little short on the outdoor run area, but I'm not sure if that matters if the birds will also be out in the yard daily.

Also does anyone use sand in their run? How does that work? Does anyone add potted plants that they swap out to give the chickens greens to peck at? Might be better to have the plant in the house and cut pieces off for them?

 

[hetty]

Hi sorry cant help about how many birds?, but I do have sand in my run, we dug down by foot put lots of stone and then mesh to stop the foxes and rats and then covered with soil and grass but you can imagin what they did with the grass it took 4 weeks and it was gone, so we put down wood chip but we had so much rain it went mouldly so we looked on here and everybody was talking about sand so we have given it a go about 6 inch indepth and so far it has been easy to remove the poo and old food, have a go