How many chicks do you keep in a backyard coop?

[hooligan]

Holy jeebus thats alot of chickens! Is this your first go with them or are you 'coming back' to chickens? Either way, good luck and keep us posted, and just so you know we'll be waiting for pix!

 

[Settin'_Pretty]

Wow, that looks like about 300 pounds of feed per week.
That's a serious investment.

 

[hooligan]

Oh yeah, why all the banties? Thats lot of wee bitty eggs

 

[KB3GZW]

Quote:
I agree.

 

[ruth]

Boy when you jump into something you just do an all out dive head-first, think about it later kind of thing. Way to go. My kind of person.

 

[Dawn419]

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We keep Banties only because their eggs are excellent for baking and because it's just two of us. We'll cook up a dozen banty eggs, eat what we want and the flock gets the left overs.

Dawn

 

[hooligan]

I use mine for baking too as we get sold out of the standard eggs LoL

 

[Chick_in_Indiana]

According to "Storey's Guide" layers should have :
Brown eggs 2.0 - 2.5 sq. ft
White eggs 1.5 - 2.0 sq. ft
Meat Breeders 2.5 - 3.0 sq. ft
Floor space per bird. It doesnt say anything about bantams, I'll keep reading.
Roost space says 6 to 8 inches for pullets. So I would say 60 to 70 feet of roosts.
I think your coop should do just fine.

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

Our hen house can handle up to 20 chickens comfortably, we do not lock the hen house or attached pen so many of them sleep on the roost or on top of the pen very few seem to sleep inside anymore. Our chick house and pen can accomodate many more but we currentl have only 11 which is very spacious for them. We will get chicks though out the year so once they leave the coop to join the others we will usually buy more to keep them at different ages.

 

[cjeanean]

I am going to have 57 chickens when my order gets here in 24 days (I'm not counting). Out of those 57, ten are roos (maybe 11, if I get a roo as my free rare chick). 8 to 9 of those roos are gonna be in a separate area, since they are for breeding purposes. Two of them have been with my original flock since 1 month old, and unless they start fighting are gonna stay (that's 2 roos for 26 hens) So, that's 47-49 chickens together (3 bantams). Based on this, I have almost 3 sq ft per chicken in my coop, with what will be 80 sq ft of roost space. I also have almost 7 sq ft of run space per chicken. I'm gonna be watching them when my flock is complete to see if they're comfortable with that amount of space, and if not I'm either gonna be cooking a lot of chicken or if money presents itself (LOL) I'll be expanding. From what I've seen they are VERY good at making sure you know what they want (food, water, outside, treats, picked up, just plain attention) so I would observe them as they grow and expand accordingly. Make sure you have about 2.5 or more sq ft coop space to start with, and as much run space as possible since extending a run is a pain after you have the fencing in and predator proofed. Maybe like 6ft per bird to start, if ur comfortable with that.