I'm almost sorry I asked. I had two roosters get a little frostbite on the tips of their combs last year, no one got sick or died. Considering we had weeks of negative temperatures and warnings to not be outside for more than 5-10 minutes at a time due to wind chill I don't think we did too bad.
Indulging in my fantasies I have looked at other coops, and I've seen coops no bigger than mine being advertised for up to 50 birds...
In the past two years I've also rescued, rehabilitated and re-homed over 150 "stray" chickens and ducks thanks to the livestock dealer down the road. He doesn't believe in providing enough feed and fresh water to the animals and just literally throws them (the fortunate ones) over the fence when they get too weak or are injured and can't be resold. The really unfortunate ones would get stuck in the mud, die and get eaten by the other animals. I've seen too many chickens laying along the road with their legs twitching and their keel bones sticking out from malnutrition. I collected them all and spent thousands of dollars out of my pocket on feed, antibiotics and medical supplies. I have literally everything you can think of from supplies to cast broken legs, suture supplies, cases of needles and syringes, the gamut of antibiotics, gauze, wrapping, supplements, ointments- because I never knew what was coming next. What was I supposed to do, watch them lay there and suffer because the neighbor is a cruel @$$hole? Most of my flock are the worst of his throwaways.
And you can add in the fact that we discovered this summer (8 years after we purchased our home) that our home inspector and the seller disclosure both lied to us about previous termite treatment. I spent $10,000 and most of my summer jacking up my house in sections and replacing the entire bandboard, sill plate, floor trusses, some subfloor and wall studs, and the one entire end of my house thanks to termites that have gone unchecked for 8 years. And we're only half way done. I just finished picking my chimney up out of the driveway. No good deed goes unpunished.
So you'll have to excuse me for not running out and purchasing a bigger coop at the moment. My hands are a little full and wallet a little empty.
I don't have eaves on my coop.
