New to chickening. What might I be missing?

A 6" circle is 0.19 square feet. An 8 inch circle is 0.35 square feet. From that subtract for the bars of the louver (and the wires of the hardware cloth, if it has any). Two such circles is enough for about a half a chicken at a minimum.

Opening windows will add more ventilation. But, um, hm, chickens don't stop breathing during the storms. They actually need ventilation the most when it is cold (well, or very hot). Dry chickens are ok in cold, even down to 40 below or so. But damp chickens start losing body parts to frost bite at only a few degrees below the freezing point.

Chickens put out a LOT of moisture (more than most other domesticated animals). And it is warm moisture so it rises. But as it rises, it cools. And cooler air can't hold as much moisture. With enough ventilation, this doesn't matter because the moisture is carried away before it cools enough to not hold the moisture. Without enough ventilation, the moisture that the cooling air can't hold settles back down on everything - including the chickens.

Putting the ventilation above the roosts works the best. Putting it below the roosts is better than not putting it anywhere.
Thank you for your helpful reply. I was thinking this was the case. Will brainstorm with husband some ways to add more ventilation. Neighbor right behind me does well with 15 chickens in his 4x8 but has a fan vent in roof. We have a solar powered fan vent in garage. May have to look into that.
 
You might rethink whether the chicks will ever get big enough to not be harmed by cats. Cats are a bigger threat to chicks but they take adult standard sized chickens also.

I'm really sorry to have so many red flags. I would rather know what they are, though, so I could at least look into them.
Thank you. I have a mix of large breeds. Brahmas, Wyandotte’s, Australorpes, and Easter Eggers. The cats are mine and a bit small as cats go. They go into our neighbors chicken run every day. They have their 15 chickens out on a large fenced portion of their yard as well. The cats walk right past the chickens, enter the coop, look for mice, and then come back.
 
Thank you for your helpful reply. I was thinking this was the case. Will brainstorm with husband some ways to add more ventilation. Neighbor right behind me does well with 15 chickens in his 4x8 but has a fan vent in roof. We have a solar powered fan vent in garage. May have to look into that.
That will help a lot!
You might want to look into fans designed for agriculture, though, because they are less likely to clog up or overheat from the dust. They are sealed against it. Chickens generate a shockingly lit of dust.
 
I covered part of my run with clear plastic corrugated panels I bought from Home Depot. They let in the sunlight/warmth in the wintertime (I live in Ohio; it gets cold here). During the summer months it can get hot (like a greenhouse) so I tack shade cloth up onto the rafters and I use a high velocity fan suspended from the roof to keep the air moving. I also use pine shavings and Sweet PDZ in the coop to keep the smell down. the rest of the run has either sand or pea gravel. You can just rake the poop out of the sand or hose it down through the pea gravel. The chickens like to scratch in the pea gravel looking for bugs.
 
Photos of clematis vines growing over the run
 

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Thank you for your helpful reply. I was thinking this was the case. Will brainstorm with husband some ways to add more ventilation. Neighbor right behind me does well with 15 chickens in his 4x8 but has a fan vent in roof. We have a solar powered fan vent in garage. May have to look into that.
Obviously chickens can survive in a smaller than ideal coop. The two biggest issues will be manure load and the one your talking about addressing- ventilation. If you clean it out often and add as much ventilation as possible you should be ok. I just wouldn’t increase in number (it is very tempting I know, there are soooo many cool kinds)
 
I'm sorry, but your coop is WAY TOO SMALL no matter how much outside run you give them. It's not 5x6, it's 4x6 -- because the nest boxes don't count. 4x6 is big enough for 6 chickens, not 12 and even for 6 chickens that coop (like all of those "Amish" style coops), has inadequate ventilation.

When considering space you can think of a chicken as a 15" cube -- about 12" of actual chicken and a bit of personal space. :)

The Usual Guidelines

For each adult, standard-sized hen you need:
  • 4 square feet in the coop,
  • 10 square feet in the run,
  • 1 linear foot of roost,
  • 1/4 of a nest box,
  • And 1 square foot of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation, preferably located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on the roost.
For 12 chickens you need:
  • 48 square feet in the coop. 6'x8' is more practical than 4'x12' since a long, skinny coop like that would be difficult to work inside.
  • 12 feet of roost.
  • 120 square feet in the run.
  • 3 nest boxes.
  • 12 square feet of ventilation.
You will need ventilation just as much in the winter as in the summer. This is BYC's best article on chickens in cold weather: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/cold-weather-poultry-housing-and-care.72010/

One thing you could do is to convert the little run into a coop so that you could divide the flock. You can see what I did to make an outdoor brooder here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/run-to-outdoor-brooder-conversion.76634/

As for the odor, with the vegetation essentially destroyed you need litter to absorb the poop and compost with it. Wood chips, wood shavings, straw, pine straw, dry leaves, or any other form of dry, organic material. The coarse wood chips you can get by the truckload from a tree-trimming service are often considered the gold standard as run litter. :)

15 chickens in his 4x8

That's only 2 square feet per chicken, twice the density recommended. Better than commercial caged layers, which get only 1/2 square foot per bird, but far from optimal. :(

The tighter the chickens are kept the more sanitation and behavior problems are likely to occur.
 

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