How much room do they need?

[UncleHoot]

Back to the original discussion... It's not just about square feet per bird, but overall space. While you might possibly be able to keep 2 chickens in 2 square feet, it would be better to keep 100 chickens in 100 square feet.

In a 10x12 pen (120 sqft), I kept around 70, which is a lot of space until the chickens get to about 6 weeks. A factory-farm may have something like 20,000 chickens in 20,000 square feet.*

So... for a 4x6 area, 10 is a reasonable amount, but as a rule of thumb, 2 square feet per meat chicken should work fine.

Yes, I said a lot just to agree with everyone else. I just wanted you to have a better idea of where we come up with these numbers.

*Personally, I still think that's overcrowding, but they make it work.

 

[SandraMort]

I think I paid $20 last year? Bought it on the street in NYC though. Dunno what i'll have this year. If my mood doesn't improve, I'll be lucky to have a lemon, celery stalk, a lettuce leaf & handful of some dried herbs.

 

[SandraMort]

Now I'm wanting to measure my barn stall. I'm guessing 10 - 15 square, somewhere in there, and has 75ish birds at 4 weeks old. They have an outdoor run that is a half circle with the curved piece being approximately 44 feet of fencing, if that helps give you some idea? It's still very comfortable and I'll be processing half sometime this month, so it should stay comfortable even if we decide not to free range them.

 

[PotterWatch]

Quote:
LOL, don't find many etrog vendors around here! We have plenty of lemons though

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As far the meat birds go, I still need to find out what the cost of processing is to find out if it will really be worth it. I'm not allowed to slaughter animals on our property, per city ordinances, even if I were so inclined (which I really am not at this point). Guess I need to find that out pretty quick.

 

[patandchickens]

As it happens, my 10 CornishX broilers are in a 4x6 pen. At 3 wks of age they started getting access to a 4x10 run as well.

If you did not have a run, and they spent all their time in the 4x6 pen, you will start having significant running-out-of-space problems with 10 of them around wk 4 or 5, and by wk 6-7 they are going to be absolutely cheek-to-jowl with no space to move around. Not only is this no fun for the chickens, it makes it impossible to keep the litter from getting really nasty-caked (you'd have to add more several times a day) AND my experience is that chickens that big n clumsy, packed in that tight, will constantly be spilling your waterer and feeder, making even bigger mess.

I am now (at, what, 7 wks?) down to 5 of them (the others are in the freezer or our tummies)... and at this age I sure would not want too much more than 5 in that pen, even just for the night as mine are. So if that were my ONLY space I'd have to say, like 6 max, unless you were planning on processing some as small fryers/cornish game hens.

JMO,

Pat

 

[Acre of Blessings]

Quote:
I agree. I also think that if a meat bird has to much space they will not put on the weight as they are suppose to. If I am wrong here, please correct me.

 

[patandchickens]

I don't know about right or wrong but I can tell you that my CornishX, which are somewhat frisky (at 7 wks they no longer fly at all but still jog and briefly sprint and sometimes even hop up off the ground, all on a regular basis) have a 4x6 pen plus 4x10 run and have gained weight at what I think is a pretty reasonable rate -- at 6 wks they averaged almost 6 lbs live weight, and the remaining ones (I processed 5 of the 10) are clearly continuing to gain considerable weight.

Probably turning them loose in a huge area and chasing them around would keep the lbs off, but 5 or 10 sq ft per chicken does not seem to be any sort of problem. I sort of think it keeps them fitter, frankly.

JME (once),

Pat