How many chickens will a 4X6 henhouse house?

[mmwb]

If you can afford bigger, go with bigger. I've housed a couple of dozen birds through the year in 8'x8' coop. In the summer they range, in the winter they have the run. It is tighter than recommended but I've never had problems with pecking, health, or production.

I really think the height of the coop may be an unknown variable. My birds have 6 feet of vertical space with multilevel roosting and room to stretch the wings. I don't know that it is a factor, but looking at some of the small coops, I could see that the square footage may be more key. I'd like to hear others' views on the vertical space thing...

 

[tomato lady]

My coop is crowded until I can get the other one finished, but they have 6 ft of vertical space. I think it makes a difference except in the morning when they are all standing at the door waiting for me to let them out. At night when they come in they roost in any available space (even on the feed buckets) and there seems to be a lot of room.

That said, I will be glad to get my 200 sq. ft. coop finished so I can move the girls up there. That coop has a shed roof and is 12 ft. high on the high side, and 10 ft. high on the low side. The attached shed is 8 ft. tall on the high side and 6 ft. on the low side. It will be all one coop when I am done.

I think the air circulation in a tall building is so much better as well.

I can't wait till I see what the girls will do when I take them up there. Probably all "hide" in a corner.

What chickens!

 

[PoultryGirly]

I also have a 4x6 chicken coop, but with 6 nest boxes. I am planning to house 4 hens, a silkie or two, and a small call duck pair. Since silkies are small, two will equal one hen, and two call ducks will equal one hen. So, I think 6 birds would be a comfortable ammount.( I also have a 7.5 x 7.5 run.)

 

[Zach123]

LF or bantams? If you are getting bantams, you could probably comfortably sqeeze 8-10 in there, if housing LF, I wouldn't get more then 6. You say you already have 10 though, so if you CAN I'd get the larger house if they are all LF, but I know how the parent thing goes, we can be kind of stingy at times lol. I'd say build your own coop. You can make it the dimentions and style you want to meet your needs, and/or creativity. Generally, board for board, a coop you build yourself is much less expensive then a pre-fab one, especially if you have things around the house you can use. I built my first coop virtually for free just digging through old scrap piles and the garage and my new one Im building now cost me just over 200$ for raw materials.