What size coop for 15 chickens?

[ECBW]

A real rancher eh?

That changes the perspective. I consider myself to to a hobbyist and take my time tinkering with my flock. Your daily routine probably includes (many) other live stocks.

The chicken farmers/ranchers in my area often have dogs (border collies mostly it seeems) watching over the flocks, wooden sheds for coop (shut in over night), open-top runs. Again, bears are rear here. Hawks do not bother fulll-grown chickens.

 

[Yellowcoop1]

15 chickens is what you plan on starting with. I am betting that number will go up. I was gonna start with 10. That number increased over a couple weeks while we built out coop. When I picked up my flock that number went from 15 to 17, then 19 on the last day of pick up. My coop is 10 x 10. That's the largest my husband would let us build. We have 5.26 sq feet per bird. My run is very large giving me well over 15 square feet per bird not including the 100 square feet under the coop.

I would make the coop as big as you can afford. I have a human door in my coop as well as a pop door into the run. I like having room to walk into the coop and clean. As you can see by the designs of folks coops on this site, lots of people have areas of storage in their coops as well.

We picked the easiest design we could because we built it ourselves. A simple 10 x 10 with a slant roof. 5 feet in the back to 7 feet in the front. You guys have so much space that the possibilities are endless.

If it was me, I would definitely insulated because of your winters. And don't forget plenty of ventilation. Poop boards under the roosts and I used cheap vinyl linoleum pressure fitted on the floor under the bedding and poop boards.


Good luck with your design. Can't wait to see pictures of it and the views.

 

[Faydra]

Thank you everyone! We decided to go as big as we could with a small attached storage room. These are the first pictures so far. We are going to put individual nesting boxes hanging outside. The run will be approximately 16x22 and fully enclosed (we do have a collie for watching livestock however he unfortunately has a bit of a chicken fetish and I'm not taking any chances!)

 

[iwiw60]

WOW! What's that old saying...."Go big or go home" ??

Outstanding job so far...your ladies will be very happy in their new digs!

 

[HighStreetCoop]

WOW! What's that old saying...."Go big or go home" ??

Outstanding job so far...your ladies will be very happy in their new digs!

I'm pretty sure that coop is bigger than the in-law "garden cottage" I lived in when I was fresh out of grad school, LOL!