the number one rule of coop building

[bturbo87]

i will confess that rule #2 showed up as soon as i finished the base of coop #1, this one is only 16 ft sq. and somehow i now have 16 chickens.... which means i need at least 32 SQ FT of space......wonderful.

 

[Kittymomma]

Quote:
Ummmm, if you have LF and not bantams it's more like 64 sq ft......

Though if they are only ever in there to sleep and lay you could probably fudge it a bit, but I don't think I'd go as small as 32 sq ft even then because if they had to be locked in for a weekend or something it could get ugly.

Edit: 'cause If you're building coops for your wife you probably won't need to be locked in them.

 

[bturbo87]

really..... im rather new to this but my understanding was 2-3 ft in the coop and 3-4 ft in the run, however out of that 16 3 are cornish hens and 3 are bantums( 1 golden sebright and 2 mf d'uccles)

 

[Hamptons06]

 

[SkyKng6154]

Mine is being built big enough just in case I screw up and the wife sends me out to the coop for the night!!

 

[nelgkel]

thanks ya'll for the great laugh!!! OH my goodness!!
Well, we moved ours from over 1/2 hr away...and it was a heavy monster!!
pvc pipes are AWESOME to move coop to location!

ok, break time over, time to get back to laundry...everytime I think of this post I will be laughing.. Hilarious!!

 

[Kittymomma]

Rule of thumb for LF is 4 sq ft in the coop and 10sq ft in the run per bird. If you go too small it might be ok for awhile, but when they grow up and especially if you get weather bad enough to keep them in much during the winter, you'll start having problems with feather pecking etc.

 

[AccioSarah]

This is very good advice! We built our coop in place- but I now want to add an addition. To save time moving my supplies out to the yard, I was thinking about doing it in the garage... so I think I'll avoid that now!

 

[GermanChick]

Quote:

 

[schellie69]

make sure coop/run are way bigger then you think chickens get bored easily in bad weather and start pecking out feathers figured that out this winter now building new coop we built it in place then had to move it because someone complained it was no 50 feet away from their house dang that thing was heavy even with the walls removed hubby built it to last.

and made sure it was bigger then one that we had in case we had to keep them in because of the weather. but this post got me to laughing really hard thanks for the laugh