Follow the link in my signature below to get my thoughts on room for chickens. We are all in different circumstances and conditions so there is no one magic number for space that fits us all. How you manage them, your climate, their personalities and flock dynamics, and many other things all play into how much room you really need. I find the more I crowd them the more behavioral problems I have to deal with, the harder I have to work, and the less flexibility I have to deal with problems that come up.
You are right to be concerned. You hardly ever hear of a purchased coop that will house nearly as many chickens as they advertise. Most of them are even worse than the one you bought with their advertising. Even saying that, the coop size itself is not what is important. It’s how much room they have when it is needed that is important. The coop size is an important part of the system to house them, but hopefully it’s not the only part. It’s part of the system of how you feed and water them, provide roosts and nests, protect them from predators, and protect them from the weather. Don’t just think coop in isolation. Think of your system that includes the coop.
If the only time you use that coop is for them to sleep safe at night and they have access to the outside from the minute they wake up until they are settled on the roost at night, you could get 10 to 12 hens in there. But if you try to feed and water in there you run out of room quickly. It can get challenging to put the food and water in places where they don’t poop on it when they roost. Nests may or may not take up room too. That depends on how you build them. They need a certain amount of room to get on or off the roosts, the higher the roosts the more free room they need to land when they hop off.
But some people do house them that tightly in the coops. They commit to getting up at the crack of dawn every day of the year to let them out if they are locked in there at night or they have a predator proof run and never lock the birds in the coop itself. You also have to have a climate where the chickens can go outside every day of the year if they want to. I have no idea what your winters are like. When you let a broody raise chicks with the flock, integrate new chickens of any age, or keep a rooster the need for space goes up. It also helps to have chickens that take confinement well.
One way that chickens have learned to live together in a flock is that when there is a conflict the weaker runs away from the stronger and soon learns to avoid them altogether. They need room to run away or avoid. More mature chickens will dominate more immature chickens. That’s why you normally see younger chickens form their own sub-flock until they grow and mature enough to force their way into the pecking order.
When you integrate chickens about the same level of maturity, they will determine a pecking order. The normal sequence of events when two chickens share personal space and don’t know the pecking order is that one tries to peck or somehow intimidate the other. If one runs away the pecking order is determined, though there may be some running away and chasing or a few repeat performances to drive the message home. If neither runs, there is probably going to be a fight. Usually one quickly determines they are better off running than fighting so it ends without anyone getting hurt. If the weaker can’t run away, either from lack of room or they get cornered against a fence, the winner does not know they won. They will keep attacking. The loser will just hunker down and try to protect its head but that does not always save its life or keep it from serious injury. It is important hey have room to run away.
Even if the pecking order is known, when a weaker chicken enters the personal space of a stronger chicken, the stronger has the right to peck the weaker. It’s bad chicken etiquette for the weaker to invade the personal space of the stronger. This does not always happen once things have settled down, but it happens enough that the weaker need room to avoid the stronger to start with or run away and get away if necessary.
Many of us successfully integrate chicks and chickens all the time. Other than having enough room, one of the ticks is to house them side by side where they can see each other but can’t get to each other for a week or more. That helps them accept the others as flock members and not a rival flock. Having several food and water stations spread out helps them to eat and drink without the weaker having to challenge the stronger. Having places the weaker can go to avoid the stronger can help a lot. That may be up on the roosts or things to hide behind or under where you break the line of sight. I think it helps to have the new chickens sleep somewhere separate for a couple of weeks until they really get used to each other. I find mine are most brutal as they are settling down to roost at night. The time to get used to each other helps with that, but you also need enough roost space so the weaker can get away from the brutes. Several times I’ve had chickens leave the roosts and sleep somewhere else because of that. I finally put a separate roost lower than the main roosts and horizontally separated to give them a place to go that was not my nests.
My preferred method is to house them side by side for a while, then let them out to free range together during the day. The younger quickly learn to avoid the older and the older don’t go hunting them down to kill them. At night they sleep separately. Eventually you can move them into the big coop together. Other people have different systems but the tighter the space the more challenging it is.
Good luck!
