My DH and I plan on keeping chickens for eggs and growing out meat chickens. This won't happen soon (as explained in my intro post) but I want to hammer out details ahead of time and possibly start construction of the coop early instead of waiting til the last minute. That being said, here are my ideas.
We plan on starting small as far as the number of chickens goes. 6 layers and 1 rooster. However since we do plan on eventually growing out some chicks I want to make sure I have plenty of coop space in the beginning. To save on lumber I want to stick with 4 and 8 foot dimensions. My thought is to build an 8'x12' coop. At 4 sf per chicken that would allow a max of 24 chickens.
Now, I know I'm going to need storage space for feed etc, so would it be best to build seperate storage next to the coop or should I just add an extra 8' to the length? Or should I just use part of the coop itself?
I'd like to keep all the chickens together once we do start breeding but is that a good idea? I know having multiple roosters in the same coop can cause issues.
One thing I've been thinking is to seperate the coop into 8'x4' sections (three of them) use one for storage, use one for the original flock and use the last one for growing out? Maybe have one of the partitions be "adjustable"?
As far as run space .. Initially we plan on using a run until the chickens are used to going into the coop every night and eventually allowing them to free range on our three acres. Wing clipping will probably be in order to keep them on our property but that's a diff topic. I know a min of 10 sf is required for a run but theats no problem. I can eventually turn that into a rabbit run (the materials).
Anyway those are some of my ideas. Am I on the right path?
We plan on starting small as far as the number of chickens goes. 6 layers and 1 rooster. However since we do plan on eventually growing out some chicks I want to make sure I have plenty of coop space in the beginning. To save on lumber I want to stick with 4 and 8 foot dimensions. My thought is to build an 8'x12' coop. At 4 sf per chicken that would allow a max of 24 chickens.
Now, I know I'm going to need storage space for feed etc, so would it be best to build seperate storage next to the coop or should I just add an extra 8' to the length? Or should I just use part of the coop itself?
I'd like to keep all the chickens together once we do start breeding but is that a good idea? I know having multiple roosters in the same coop can cause issues.
One thing I've been thinking is to seperate the coop into 8'x4' sections (three of them) use one for storage, use one for the original flock and use the last one for growing out? Maybe have one of the partitions be "adjustable"?
As far as run space .. Initially we plan on using a run until the chickens are used to going into the coop every night and eventually allowing them to free range on our three acres. Wing clipping will probably be in order to keep them on our property but that's a diff topic. I know a min of 10 sf is required for a run but theats no problem. I can eventually turn that into a rabbit run (the materials).
Anyway those are some of my ideas. Am I on the right path?
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