Are these coups and runs, like at tractor supply any good or do they not last. If you have 14 chickens why only 3 nesting boxes. As you can tell i am a beginner and don't want to waste my money or time. I would like enough eggs to support food for 8 family members and to sell some. I would appreciate any guidance you could give me. Thank you
I have 28 hens and 20 total nest boxes. The boxes are the two-tier metal type and there are two sets of them. The birds regularly use maybe 8 of the boxes. There are probably another 8 that they
never use, and the rest get occasional use. All but one of my birds (a runt) lays; the oldest are 18 months old. That many birds produces 12-25 eggs/day, but the eggs vary in size between the breeds and some are too small to sell. We feed those scrambled back to the birds as treats and give nearly all the rest away to neighbors and friends. It's not unusual to have 8 cartons of eggs sitting in the barn fridge waiting to be gifted to someone. The eggs also seem to vary in size by the time of year. We were getting more large-jumbo eggs through the fall until about December.
I started with chickens in August, 2023. My advice to anyone just starting out is to not spend a ton of money until you decide what you like, how you will use what you buy, and how you will and can use the space you have available. If I'd designed a chicken operation a year ago I'd be hosed now, because my processes changed, the number of birds changed (it always goes up), how I work around the coop, run, and yard changed, etc. And it all changed several times. At this point I'd be confident of designing something really cool and really useful from scratch, given a bunch of free money. But I can't count the number of times I bought something thinking, "This will work great" and did that three more times before settling on what really works for me. The only thing I absolutely knew, even before I got the first chicks, was that the barn needed electricity and running water. I've never regretted investing in those. The other thing I'd absolutely recommend is electrified poultry netting for their yard. It's light and really easy to install and move. I get the 48" height and the birds are surprisingly content to never fly over it. It has contained them well since last winter without a single loss to predators, and we're very rural here. The other anti-predator measure we took was to install deer netting overhead above the yard area, connected with zip ties to chains run from the building to a pair of trees. It comes in 7' wide rolls at TS for not much money, it's light, easy to work with, and prevents hawk incursions. I would definitely not recommend what is sold specifically as hawk netting, because it's an absolute nightmare to work with. It's basically fishing line and it sucks.
The only coops I've seen at
Tractor Supply look completely impractical for more than 2-3 birds. What you can get depends on budget and zoning, but if the property I bought hadn't had a pre-existing building I'd have gone with a garden shed from Home Depot or something similar from one of those places that makes tiny houses. If you have the tools and skills you could probably get a used/junked shipping container for less than a shed and modify it with a couple of windows, clerestory ventilation, and a wall-mounted louver fan to move the air.
