Officialy confused with coop size!!

[farmeristas]

Hello dear BYC forum, greetings from greece!!! you ve been such a good company all this time!!
have n't introduce my self and i promise i'll do it tonight
I have a really important question, i tried searching and reading very long posts but i didn't get my answer yet so here we go...
In the next months or month am building my new coop, i want to house 20 hens, the thing is that usualy i see that people and farmers sugest 2,6 sq ft per full grown bird wich leads us to 52 sq ft for 20 birds, so we ending up with almost 5x11 coop wich by my farmer friend opinion its extremly huge!!!! the thing is that there will be a covered run for the rainy days and the rest will be 100% free range,

SO my question is 2,6 sq ft per bird run+coop or 2,6 sq feet only for the sleeping?

P.S. sorry for the long post but am really stuck with this question and creates a lot of problems in my plans !!!

 

[Wyandottes7]

Ideally, each bird should have 4 square feet of inside space, and ideally at least 10 square feet of outside space. If your birds are free-ranging, you may be able to get by with 3 square feet or so of inside space. For twenty birds, that would mean you need a coop with an inside area/henhouse between 60 and 80 square feet.

 

[farmeristas]

Ok then i have to start a small barn to bad the recycled materials are limited here so it will cost a fortune BUT I'll do it
thank you for imidiate answer

 

[cehasz]

The more room, the less stress on days they want to stay inside! I found that for economically friendly large coops, hoop coops are the way to go.

 

[farmeristas]

i was about hoop coop but its going to be a visit farm later as well so my wife just forbid me thinking a hoop

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

i was about hoop coop but its going to be a visit farm later as well so my wife just forbid me thinking a hoop

Why? I can't see anything about using a hoop coop design that would preclude having visitors to the coop.

 

[cehasz]

Why? I can't see anything about using a hoop coop design that would preclude having visitors to the coop.

And they are so easy to maintain and you can make them look very showable. Mine is simple, but I could make it quite creative if I wanted to!

 

[farmeristas]

well am not going to have visitors in the coop but we want the place of the farm that we will house the animals everything to look like a small village lets say 5-6 mini barn style buildings etc etc

 

[ECBW]

OP, 5x11 for 20 birds is not HUGE.

With full time access to a covered run, you flock will use the coop as bedroom for the most part. So 2.6 sf/bird is fine. Mine is at 2.5 sf. With good interior layout to maximize space efficiency, you can fit nests, waterer, feeder and roosts all in there.

Just one thing, lumber come in standard sizes. Consider design your coop to minimize waste. For example, instead of 5x11 consider 8x8. extra room never hurt.

My coops are made from recycled and reclaimed material, in which case full size lumbers are hard to come by. I ended up using multiple of 3 in order utilize material on hand.

 

[vbob99]

5x11 as stated above isn't that large. you might want to make it a bit larger especially since you want a small village. chicken math will almost definitely come into play