Okay. So here's my plans, please tell me if they won't/will work.
I am getting 2 chicks very soon at my local hatchery, one maran and a silver laced wyandotte.
Well, I also want 2 cochin bantam chicks (they are my dream chicken.)
I have a big coop and a small coop. The big coop is 23 ft long, including the coop, the width is 8 ft and it is 8-9 ft tall. The run by itself is 18 ft long and the coop is 5 ft long.
The small coop is 13 ft long, about 7 ft tall and 9 ft wide. The coop is raised so they can go underneath it as well.
Only the big coop is being occupied currently by 13 chickens. The small one is completely empty, but the girls like to go in there during the day to lay their eggs.
Our original plans were to keep our current chickens in the coop that they are in now and put our 2 new ones in the small coop. And if (and I emphasize IF) I get a cochin bantam or 2, do you think I could add them in with the maran and the SLW in the small coop? Will the big girls bully the little ones? Is there enough room in there you think? I mean, I don't want to cram mine in there, I want them to have enough room. I saw online that you can "comfortably" fit 16 free-range chickens in a 4 by 8 coop, but I want them to have enough room and not be wing-to-wing all the time.
But I get really cold winters where I live so for 2 straight months they will be living in the coop, whereas people in hot climates when they can always free-range. So my point is, I can't cram a bunch of chickens in a small coop and when the winter comes, they are crammed in there and get all stressed out.
In theory, cochin bantams are really small, so they really shouldn't take up much room anyway, right?
Thanks so much if you've read this far! I will be attaching pictures of my coops in a post below this.
(And a question for bantam owners: how much do they actually eat and how often do they go through a bag of feed? I am hoping that they won't really make that much of a dent in the food cost. We already go through a 50 lb bag every 1 and a half - 2 weeks as it is
)
I am getting 2 chicks very soon at my local hatchery, one maran and a silver laced wyandotte.
Well, I also want 2 cochin bantam chicks (they are my dream chicken.)
I have a big coop and a small coop. The big coop is 23 ft long, including the coop, the width is 8 ft and it is 8-9 ft tall. The run by itself is 18 ft long and the coop is 5 ft long.
The small coop is 13 ft long, about 7 ft tall and 9 ft wide. The coop is raised so they can go underneath it as well.
Only the big coop is being occupied currently by 13 chickens. The small one is completely empty, but the girls like to go in there during the day to lay their eggs.
Our original plans were to keep our current chickens in the coop that they are in now and put our 2 new ones in the small coop. And if (and I emphasize IF) I get a cochin bantam or 2, do you think I could add them in with the maran and the SLW in the small coop? Will the big girls bully the little ones? Is there enough room in there you think? I mean, I don't want to cram mine in there, I want them to have enough room. I saw online that you can "comfortably" fit 16 free-range chickens in a 4 by 8 coop, but I want them to have enough room and not be wing-to-wing all the time.
But I get really cold winters where I live so for 2 straight months they will be living in the coop, whereas people in hot climates when they can always free-range. So my point is, I can't cram a bunch of chickens in a small coop and when the winter comes, they are crammed in there and get all stressed out.
In theory, cochin bantams are really small, so they really shouldn't take up much room anyway, right?
Thanks so much if you've read this far! I will be attaching pictures of my coops in a post below this.
(And a question for bantam owners: how much do they actually eat and how often do they go through a bag of feed? I am hoping that they won't really make that much of a dent in the food cost. We already go through a 50 lb bag every 1 and a half - 2 weeks as it is
)
Since my 1st post in this thread, I moved our roo Benny and his girl Dottie into the small coop because Benny was getting bullied to the extent where he would spend all day every day in the coop if they weren't free-ranging because Ledo our other rooster would make him stay in there. I'm definitely planning to put more girls in there for Benny for the winter because Dottie will definitely get overmated and due to Benny's long spurs that we need to trim she could get really hurt. When we get more chicks we will split them up among both coops so that each coop will have a fair, but not even, amount in both. I was thinking maybe 2-3 more chickens for the A-frame (to make a total of 4-5), and 2-3 more in the large coop to make a total of 12-13.
