Question about free ranged hen coop size - can I fudge the guidelines?

[patandchickens]

If you built a large roofed area so they were happy to go out all day on yucky days, it might be doable (put the roosts right down near floor level to avoid getting-up-there problems with two parallel roosts).

BUT, I would not really suggest that as an ideal situation, and it will cost you a significant chunk of change to build a roofed area *anyhow* (properly, so it stays put over the years). It would probably be better to bite the bullet and just build a whole new thing, preferably *including* a roofed outdoor area but also giving them more indoor space.

HOwever if you are renting (sounds like maybe you are?) I think your better solution would be as follows: only get 5 chickens, and make a small knee-height roofed area they can use on rainy days (this is much simpler and cheaper to do). Honestly I do not think it would likely be in your best economic interests to get 10 chickens, as remember that doubles the amount of chicken feed you must buy... year round, regardless of how well they are laying. Unless you live in an area where backyard eggs can be sold for a whole big lot more than the cost of production. But most places that's not the case.

JMHO, good luck have fun,

Pat

 

[Gypsy07]

My chickens don't refuse to go outside in the snow, unless it's very deep. A couple of inches doesn't bother them at all. Same goes for rain and wind. They prefer free ranging over being warm and dry any day! Though I suppose there's a big difference between -2C and -20C....

You CAN fudge on coop sizes but the larger the coop, the more you can get away with. At the moment I have 27 birds in an 8x6 shed, all large fowl. Going by the 4 sq ft per bird rule, I should only have 12 birds in there. But when I DID only have 12 birds, they all bunched up tightly on one roost at night and the shed looked nearly empty. There's no bullying, no feather plucking, and everyone seems to get on very well in there. I do have an attached run, well, one on each side of the shed actually, but my birds free range from early in the morning until they put themselves to bed at dusk.

Running one roost down each side of the shed would give you a lot of roost space, but you have to be careful with how far away from the wall you put roosts, because if they're too close the birds tail feathers will get damaged. And they do need quite a bit of 'flapping space' to get up and down from the roosts. I think if I were you I would put one roost along the back wall, and another down the left hand wall. That would give them almost the same amount of roost space but much more flapping space.

I'd agree with Midget_farms though. In that shed, I'd say you should go for 6 birds max.

 

[Lil Mucket]

Quote:
Oh that brings up something else I was wondering. I haven't had a chance to check out costs of feed in my area, but I live right outside the Seattle metropolitan area and local eggs generally sell for $3/doz for regular up to $5 for the organically fed eggs. I have no idea if feed costs are high in comparison, but I know that's considerably higher than many people can get so my guess would be that I could probably pay for chicken feed with eggs that I sell. I do know one price - I can get soy-and-corn-free organic and locally grown and milled feed for $26/50lbs. That's a high price, but if I went that route I could charge $5/dozen like some of the other local people. I am pretty sure I am not going that route, though. Average price of Albertson's brand eggs are about $2.50/doz so I am pretty sure I'll get conventional feed and charge about $3 if I do.

Also, I actually already have a buyer for about 10 dozen/month if I do decide to go with more, and that doesn't count any my husband seems to think he can sell to his co-workers, or my landlord who has expressed interest (though he might get some of his own).

The reason I wanted to go with around 10 (8 or 9 hens + roo) vs. 5 hens is actually due to my concerns with the food supply - with the 80-100% crop losses in Mexico, and food costs being at a record high, I felt like it would be a good idea to get more hens and a rooster so I could hatch meat chickens if necessary. I've processed chickens before and it's a messy job, so I don't want to go into actual "meat birds". I'd prefer to keep dual-purpose chickens so I could get eggs (and sell the excess) but also could get meat if buying it became too cost prohibitive.

Having said that, I may just start with the 5 and add more later. I'm still sorta debating the options.

OH and as far as winter goes - if we get snow, it's melted within a few days and usually very little accumulation. We actually got about a foot & half this winter and my landlord said he'd lived here for 30 years and never had seen anything like it. Our average high in the summer is 77 degrees in August and average lows are 31 degrees in January. Right now it's snowing out (odd, haven't seen snow for about 2 months!) but my thermometer tells me it's 39 degrees out. So... weather will most likely not be a concern here.

So I am definitely thinking that the little shed will not make a good coop! It's back to the drawing board for a tractor coop design - it really sounds like the shed would be more of a hassle to renovate than it is worth.

 

[Gypsy07]

I don't know anything about food prices in the US, but here in the UK I can buy a ready-for-the-oven plucked and gutted chicken for less than a tenth of what it would cost me to rear a chick to adulthood. The only reason I would rear my own birds for eating would be for reasons of health, nutrition and personal ethics, as factory farmed chickens are kept in horrible conditions and the quality of the meat is very poor. But it wouldn't be to save money...

 

[patandchickens]

Well, IME you can figure on something on the general order of one sack of feed per hen per 6 months (I mean, obviously you're not going to keep an individual sack of feed around for that long

but I mean in terms of consumption rate). That means if your feed cost you $16/bag (that's what I'm paying right now) you would have to sell $32 worth of eggs per hen per year to break even on feed (mind you, this number ignores other costs such as bedding, setup, repairs, and occasional replacement of equipment or hens). If your feed costs you $26/bag you would have to sell $52 worth of eggs per hen per year to break even on its feed only. But in reality I would suggest doubling these number as a rough estimate of other expenses (bedding, equipment, replacement costs, etc). These things are doable in many areas but not everywhere, and this is only a BALLPARK estimate as your actual feed usage may be different especially if you have higher waste (or a different size bag of feed than I'm using, lol, I don't even know how many lbs it is! doh

) Bear in mind that probably not all eggs will be saleable, as some will be "weird" or uncleanably pooey. You can of course eat those yourself.

The meat business is something totally else. The price of anything in Mexico is not going to affect the price of supermarket chicken one tiny bit, it is grown on corn and soy and so forth and it is produced SO cheaply that the only way you can hope to come close to matching its price at home is if you have access to a very large reasonably-high-protein source of varied, balanced free food scraps or extensive free ranging with lots of bugs. You have to shovel WAY WAY more food into a dual-purpose chicken for WAY WAY longer just to get it to edible weight than for the supermarket-type CornishX, and then its carcass weight will be a lower % meat than the supermarket type one is. TOTALLY not economical, barring an extensive free food supply one way or another. Of course it is really GOOD meat, I am by no means wanting to discourage you from trying it, but WAY WAY more expensive meat.

Pat

 

[Lil Mucket]

I'm not actually looking to replace supermarket chickens... I'm wanting to have dual purpose hens in case I ever have to. I'm certainly not going to try to get into the meat chicken operation - helped my mom raise and process her meat birds last year and the birds were cool (Rangers, not Cornish X) but I wouldn't want to have to consistently do the processing, especially not with what else I have going on this year.

I realize that at this moment I can buy a CAFO chicken at the store for $5, but the truth is commodity food prices are at an all time high right now. This means wheat, corn, beans, soy, etc. I mean seriously - all-time highest prices they have ever been. Look here - Commodity Food Price Index. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see news articles that put things more into perspective from ABC, CBS, Business Week, and more.

That isn't reflected in grain prices that we can see just yet, but the rising cost of oil means rising cost of transportation which means rising cost of feeding chickens and transporting them to the grocery stores (and a meat packer, actually). I wouldn't be surprised if locally produced food ends up cheaper than many grocery store foods in the next few years, simply because of the huge difference in transportation costs. I simply will not believe that commodity food prices will not affect meat prices, considering that's what they eat.

Which, again, doesn't go into the ethical considerations that Gypsy brought up. If I could find a local chicken producer who didn't do the CAFO thing I would buy from them. I can't find any, which means I'm stuck with a grocery store chicken.

Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I do not like being completely dependent on the grocery stores getting in their restocking trucks every 2 days.

Pat - thanks for the numbers! I am not intending to use that expensive feed, but you have given me a way to calculate what the cost is when I get chickens. I think my mom pays about $14 for her feed which means mine will be close to that or what you pay.

So for numbers sake, if I have 5 hens and I get on average 3 eggs per day that would be 21 per week. We use anywhere from a dozen to 1 1/5 dozen right now... so I don't think I'd do much selling. If I had 8 hens and got on average 5 eggs a day that's about 1 1/2 dozen per week extra, or 78 cartons per year. at $3/carton that would be $234.00. Assuming like yours my hens go through one bag of feed every 6 months that's a total of 16 bags, or $256.00, so this would just about pay for the eggs we get.

And that doesn't count for anything they get for forage - I do intend to grow lots of greens and I also have composting worms that I raise and I can feed to them as well. This whole property is practically covered with rotting logs, piles of leaves, moss, and all kinds of stuff that has TONS of bugs in it. Not to mention all the dropped fruit I'll probably have from the orchard, and kitchen scraps.

When you account for all that, I think we would come out ahead if we had 8 hens. If we stick with 5 hens, we'd get about 91 dozen per year at a cost of $160.00, or $1.76 per dozen which is less than the cheapest price at the stores. Either way we win.

 

[midget_farms]

My chickens have never gone outside in the snow. They wont go out unless I shovel a path for them.

 

[Lil Mucket]

Quote:
Weird! I wonder if it depends on the breed. My mom was just telling me hers have been out even in crazy snow - and they get feet and feet of snow where they are.

 

[OkChickens]

If I had the choice of this I would add a 4x8 or 4x12 section to the side of the existing 4x4 structure making it a total of 4x12 or 4x16 with a slanted roof like the original structure has. I would put 3-4 nestboxes in it accessible from the outside with a hinge door for the top. Also add a 10x10 or at least a 100sq ft run for the 10 birds. I know you said 10 MAX but chicken math gets the best of all of us.... I started out with 20 now I have about 40 and I have 150 chicks coming in march. Its a great way to start by expanding you coop for more chickens.

-Nate

 

[Fred's Hens]

From the original post, there seems to be an element of economic self sufficiency in your motivation to begin with chickens. The pictured coup aside, I keep between 20 to 30 full layers at any given time, with an additional 20 pullets coming up, to cycle in, raising out 2 batches of chicks a year. The barn you see in my avatar is 24x20. It has two lofts for storage of straw, feed, brooding equipment and wood shaving cubes. It is electrified for water warming and lights so I can see in the dark. The chickens have access to runs and free range, when the weather permits.

I charge my area's limit of $2.50 per dozen. I sell 10-12 dozen eggs a week and barely manage $1 profit per dozen. Given the amount of work involved, a part-time job at Mickey D's would far surpass my earnings. I attend to chores a minimum of twice a day, every day! Chickens do not permit trips, days off, vacations, etc, unless you have incredible help from a neighbor.

I urge you to weigh all these things out carefully.