Is My Coop Too Small? (pics!)

[ILikeBirds]

Hey All,

Over month ago I bought seven pullets from a women off of craigslist, a couple days later I built a small coop out off scrap materials that were lying around my barn. I'm quite proud of it as it cost me absolutely nothing. But just last week I found myself subject to a terrible impulse purchase. The local feed store was selling GLW and RIR chicks and I had to get some, so I ended up buying eight... All in all I have a total of 15 chickens now (eight are still chicks and still in the broader) and I'm worried my coop will be too small once they are all in the run together. I have about eight nesting boxes ("about" because two are tucked in the corner and at an odd shape) and two small roosts. I'll put a few pic down below.

So Specifically my questions are:

Will my coop be big enough for all 15 birds?

and

Do I have enough nesting boxes that are adequate?

The chickens seldom use the coop during the day and they have a large run that it 35'X40'

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

The short answer is - no that is, unfortunately, not nearly enough space for the number of birds you are keeping. Frankly, it was not sufficient for 7. While they may not use it much during the day, the concern is during inclement weather and at night when they go to roost - - the coop, as is, cannot provide adequate roosting space or floor space for times when they wish to be in under shelter vs. out in the run during the day. Generally speaking, you want 4 square feet of floor space in the coop per LF bird - some will wiggle that amount down on the argument of climate, etc, but the point is the goal should not be to look at it as "how many birds can I squeeze into a space" . The next boxes are more than sufficient in number as you really only need one box for every 4 birds (more boxes is fine).

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

The good news is, if you spend some time looking around here you'll find lots of coops that have been built at little or no cost that are larger and you can get ideas for how to build a shelter sufficient for your flock.

 

[HighStreetCoop]

The coop doesn't appear to be predator-proof either (assuming the green sides really are just some kind of tarp).

 

[tcstoehr]

Uh, hmmmm, I don't think that's quite big enough. I doubt all your birds would voluntarily go in there together. Four nest boxes would be an absolute minimum but that's not what concerns me. 15 chickens packed in there seems way out of line. Maybe the original 7 would have been OK... barely. As long as they were just in there roosting for the night. They would probably occupy both roosting bars as well as the area on top of the nesting boxes. Where will the other 8 go? I would think there would be nightly squabbles over who got to roost out of the poop zone. In reality, I think some would prefer to spend the night outside rather than pack themselves in there. The good news is you now have an excellent project to work on. What fun!

 

[atxorion]

You might be able to salvage what you made if you can make it have more floor space. A thought may be to take all the nest boxes out of that coop area and make it strictly for roosting; since you have 15 birds shoot for 60 sqaure feet of roosting area (4 square foot per bird) . You can move your nest bozes below the newly created box you built and will probably only need 4 12"x12"x12" boxes.

If you need to make it preadator proof you can use electric fence; with the wire spaced 5-5 inces apart about 48" high if the wings are clipped.