"survivors" need a bigger coop:}

[mommyof5]

Help, My husband, father, father-in-law, brother and the feed store guy all told me to buy "extra" chicks. "Because after all mam this is your first try at chickens and the die pretty easy(the feed store guy)". I bought 40 cute little fluffy butts(seven different breeds). 1 died(blind, dh culled for me).

The rest are fat and happy and now laying. But with winter coming they are definitely going to be needing a bigger coop, currently they have a 8x10 coop with 20x30 fenced run that the never use except for eating treats, and 2 fenced acres for free range that they share with the cats, dogs, deer, elk, and the "for real kids".

So in addition to current coop, what size will I(dh) need to build as the guest house?

 

[substandardtim]

sods law they are all happy and healthy lol. I think the spacing for larger hens is 4 square foot per bird in the coop and 10 square foot in the run. I may be wrong though those numbers are off the top os my head.

 

[mommyof5]

Okay so you are talking to the crazy lady with all the kids, cats and now chickens. What does all that square footage add up to?

 

[substandardtim]

well I am really bad with the math so I will just work backwords from when my husband built our coop.

your current coop is 8x10 so 80 square foot. divide that by 4 square foot and that comes out to 20 birds. so if my math is correct you need double the size you have now. you could build one big coop or just a duplicate to the one you have now.

 

[mommyof5]

Thanks so much, but maybe I had better make it even bigger, you know just in case we "need" more chickens.

 

[patandchickens]

Estimate how big you can possibly talk your husband into building, divide by #chickens, and then tell him BYC said you absolutly have to have *at least* that square footage per chicken

No really, just build the biggest that is economically and physically reasonable. That way you will either have extra-happy extra-easily-managed chickens, or room for *more* chickens, or if worst comes to worst and you reduce flock size someday, who ever complains about having extra outbuilding space available?

Good luck, have fun,

Pat