What's an appropriate coop size?

[Wayland10]

Hi folks!
I've been looking at coop designs and I'm a little puzzled. I know that you're supposed to have 4 square feet of space inside per chicken, but all of the prefab coops I've seen advertise less than half of this. For instance I saw a 4x6 coop advertized as housing for 12 chickens! By my count, shouldn't this be adequate for only about 6 hens? Is this common? What am I missing? I want 5 hens, so I should need at least a 4x5 coop, right? I'm going to order my chickens in the spring - I finally have my whole family on board! Thanks!

 

[Chicks Galore3]

It should only hold 6 hens - some people stuff the chickens in. (Either they don't care about the chickens or they don't know better.) My chickens are spoiled with about 14 feet per.

The bigger the better.

 

[aart]

Prefabbed coop marketing, like all marketing, is like that... they are trying to sell things, not educate people as to the realities of chicken keeping.

Do some reading here to learn that you really ought to make your coop and run as big as you can afford...think to the future! Do lots of reading and research before building or buying anything.

 

[Melinda48]

Our coop is 10'x10' and we have 12 birds. We over-built but everyone seems happy with it. We are using chicken nipple waterer s and love them- neat and tidy which means no poop in the water dish. We are going to mount egg collection door on the outside and just saw a photo of a coop where you can load the feed through 4"PVC from the outside (brilliant idea)! So I guess the answer is that our coop like us is ever evolving" ; )

 

[Melinda48]

Here's our coop.

 

[appps]

Yeah they underestimate just a little. We bought one on eBay which was supposed to be big enough for three hens. Needless to say nowhere near it, we now use it as a nesting box.