Run Space (Square Footage) Needs for 30 Chickens?

[Grain Gypsy]

Here's the short version of my problem/question. We've got 20 chickens right now, and 10 more day-old chicks on order that are scheduled to arrive next week. That will be 30 chickens total, and the self-imposed chicken limit we've decided on as a family. My handy, handsome husband offered to make a stationary run for the chickens (accessible from the coop during the day). He kindly asked me what I would like for the run, and I gave him a couple of pictures and I said that my only requirement is that the run have 300 square feet (enough for 10 square feet for each of the 30 chickens). Long story short, the run came up 79 square feet short. Should I cancel the order of the last 10 chicks, or will the 30 chickens be able to live peacefully in the 221 square foot run? Any experience and/or advice would be greatly appreciated!


Here are the details for you engineering types.
Right now he's got poles concreted in the ground and fencing put up. He made the width of the run a little narrower than the concrete grain silo that is our coop (13'), and the length of the run ended up at 17'. That put the run at 221 square feet, 79 square feet short of the 300 needed (using the 10 square feet per bird equation). To my husband's credit, part of the miscalculation is due to part of the rounded silo that we didn't figure in, that takes up part of the run. [In other words, the fence of the length of the run is 21', but we can really only count the run length as 17', because that's how long it is from the actual silo (coop) to the end of the run at the fattest part of the silo's circle. So there may be a *few* extra square feet in there, give or take.]

Here are the details for the married folk out there.
MY situation is this. I pointed out the space problem to my husband, asking if we could widen the coop (while he is still in the first stages of construction) to provide the extra square footage we need to make it up to 300 square feet in the run, but he was pretty miffed that I asked and he clearly didn't want to change what he had already done. Do I need to cancel my order of our extra 10 chicks, or can 30 chicks live peacefully with their 221 square foot run? To clarify, we shut them in the coop at night, and they will have access to both the coop and run during the day. I won't diminish the hard work my husband has done by bringing it up to him again, but I am also trying to appease my 4 kids (who all have "special" breeds coming with the 10 chicks next week) while also considering the health and happiness of the chickens and my marriage.

 

[cavemanrich]

Don;t cancel any orders. It will be best for your children, marriage and the chickens. NOW FOR THE HARD TRUTH. If in time you notice there is overcrowding. a few things can happen. Your husband may voluntarily enlarge the run. You may loose some of your chickens. (not all chickens live long lives.) (not to mention predators.) I am not sure your reason for keeping chickens. High numbers usually means you want lots of eggs. It can also mean you want to send some to freezer camp. Ether way. it will be a while until your 10 new chicks grow to be adults. You will be able to make a decision then.
HOPE THIS HELPS.


AND OF COURSE

 

[Teila]

Hi there Grain Gypsy and welcome to BYC

I agree with cavemanrich and believe that you do not need to cancel any orders or make a decision at this time.

Without being ‘cold’ or ‘negative’; there is the chance you may lose a couple of the new chicks or even some of the gals you have now.

As I said, not trying to be negative but it is a fact of chicken life. So, by the time your new littlies are big enough to join the existing gals, numbers may have differed. Also, you have not mentioned if you have roosters, plan on having roosters or can keep roosters. But unless the day old chicks you are getting are sexed (and even then there are no guarantees) or sex links you may have some roosters and depending on your rooster plan, this may alter numbers also.

In your shoes, I would continue with Plan A and reassess if/when it becomes an issue.

Lots of luck and enjoy your feathered babies

 

[tracecom]

Here are the details for you engineering types.
Right now he's got poles concreted in the ground and fencing put up. He made the width of the run a little narrower than the concrete grain silo that is our coop (13'), and the length of the run ended up at 17'. That put the run at 221 square feet, 79 square feet short of the 300 needed (using the 10 square feet per bird equation). To my husband's credit, part of the miscalculation is due to part of the rounded silo that we didn't figure in, that takes up part of the run. [In other words, the fence of the length of the run is 21', but we can really only count the run length as 17', because that's how long it is from the actual silo (coop) to the end of the run at the fattest part of the silo's circle. So there may be a *few* extra square feet in there, give or take.]

I have a little good news for you. When you take into account the two "triangular areas" adjacent to the coop, that adds 15 square feet to the run, making the total 236 square feet instead of 221, so there's room for another chicken and a half. That's based on the radius of the silo being about 7.3 feet (which I got by calculating the chord length (13 feet and the segment height (4 feet (21 minus 17)).

If that is correct, the area of the inside of the silo is about 166 square feet. The rule of thumb is that you need 4 square feet of coop space per chicken, so for 30 chickens you need 120 square feet; thus you have 46 square feet of "surplus" coop space. If that space is available to the chickens all the time, then my logic is that you can add that 46 square feet to the run area, making a grand total of 282 square feet.

In other words, stop worrying and be happy. Tell your husband how pleased you are with the hard work he's doing for you and the kids.

 

[Grain Gypsy]

Thanks, y'all, for your help and encouragement! My mind is much more at ease now. We are going to keep our order for next week and just enjoy life and see how it goes with the chickens in the space we have available.

The reason we have chickens is for enjoyment, education (I home school our 4 kids), for 4-H show chickens, and for eggs. We have a mixed flock of show breeds and heavy layers.

We live on a rural property with 5 acres bordering a river, and what's left of our original flock is 7 months old. We *were* primarily free-ranging our original flock. One of our Polishes either wandered off or got picked off by a fox around 5 months, and then we lost 5 other hens and our rooster in one, fell swoop to stray dogs on Good Friday.

We can handle an occasional loss due to a fox because, after all, the foxes were here first. Plus, foxes use (eat) what they kill. But losing many chickens due to the senseless killing of stray dogs--who just killed one, dropped it, and went on to the next chicken (just for fun)--is not acceptable for us. Hence the need for a permanent run for the chickens to be in when we're not home (or when we want to protect newly-planted vegetables or flowers).

tracecom, I will have to go out and measure the silo, because I actually think it may have more square footage than even you calculated, due to the fact that my husband didn't use the entire diameter of the silo for the run's width. He made it a touch narrower so that the front of the silo would kind of aesthetically hide the run from the road and the front of the house. If that is the case (that the square footage of the silo is bigger than originally thought), then that is even more space to add to what you figured! Yay!

I will post a picture of the silo and run when my husband gets it finished. I am so very grateful that my husband has been a willing (even encouraging) participant in our chicken-raising endeavors. He said just last night, as he was out working on cutting the hole in the silo for a door between coop and run (pointing to my black Frizzle, Tina), "She's my favorite. She even comes up and lets me pet her." I couldn't ask for a cooler husband. He loves me, our kids AND our chickens!

 

[Grain Gypsy]

Teila,

I forgot to mention that we purchased our chickens, sexed, from mypetchicken.com. I planned and ordered 3 roosters out of the 30 chickens. None of the roosters are left from my 7-month-old flock. We have one Barred Plymouth Rock and Buff Brahma Bantam rooster so far. Both are 3 1/2 weeks old. Our third rooster, a Golden Buff, will come with next week's chick shipment. That's a 1:9 ratio, if things work out and there were no sexing errors.
Our first rooster, Perry, was a Silver-Spangled Hamburg sexing mistake!

We thought something was fishy when he started crowing promptly at 5 weeks! He was also cross-beaked, to boot! As "special" as he was, we sure did love him, and he was a gentlemen to us and the girls. When I phoned mypetchicken.com to alert them of the cross beak, they insisted that they reimburse me for the sexing error, even though I reassured her that it was okay that he turned out to be a rooster. The reason we really enjoyed having him around was that he alerted us whenever there was danger. He also sometimes cried wolf by accident, like when there was just a plastic sack blowing through the wind or something like that. LOL.

 

[Teila]

Hey Grain Gypsy

I am sorry to read of your loss; it is always heart breaking when we lose one or more of our featheries but even moreso in such tragic circumstances.

I live in a no rooster zone and have had to part with a couple of roosters that I hatched here; it is a very sad day when the babies we hatch have to leave home. Mind you, I am sure the neighbours would not be impressed with 04:45am crowing!

I have been lucky in that I have been able to find homes for them and except on one occasion, before they started crowing.

I hung onto one beautiful little boy longer than I should, totally living in denial that he was a boy and then early one morning he burst that bubble.

I have two little ones at the moment who turn 6 weeks on Monday, from a hatch of 5. Once again, the obvious boys have been found homes and I have everything crossed that the two I have kept are girls; looking good so far.

That is it for me now with hatches, we have reached critical chicken mass (6).

We have a Frizzle, LuLu who is the clown of the flock and you can’t help but love her. She is so cute! Nothing phases her.

Hubby picked LuLu out of a bin full of identical looking Frizzles and she is his favourite.

He overhead me one day on the phone saying “I have four chickens”; he promptly corrected me “YOU have three chickens”. When I am talking to hubby about the gals, LuLu is more often than not referred to as “your chicken”.

One of the chicks I mentioned earlier is also a Frizzle, so now we have two!

LuLu:



KiKi:

 

[PapaChaz]

something to keep in mind is, if you do the actual math and come up with the 300 sq ft that's great, BUT.......the more room you have, the less 'PER chicken' you'll need sometimes. Because they have more space to move around in. They'll run in groups anyway, so there will be some over here, some over there, and none there, there, there or there.......you'll have enough room.

and as mentioned, if by chance you do see some of the issues common to overcrowding, and another small section later on, you could even make it separate and run a 'chunnel' for them to get from one spot to the other. there have been quite a few threads on people doing that and it looks like it works great