not sure I am following you, the 4 sq ft per bird would be inside a 'hen house'. Wouldn't include the run enclosure too, that would need to be 10 sq ft per bird. These are minimums mind you. You've seen mine, so my actual coop space inside the little play house is 60 sq ft, good enough for 15. Before I gave away the two roosters so far, I had 14.So I've never figured my max capacity in, say, my green coop before. (And by "coop" I mean an elevated, always-open coop within an enclosure/run area) The footprint of it is 8x12 feet, so 96 sq ft. By the "four square feet" rule, I could have 24 birds in there!?!? I have seven now and that's not too far from my limit. And that doesn't include the additional 4x8' enclosed coop.. I just couldn't imagine having enough to fill the rule?
Now having a run that's 220 square feet helps with that, because other than eating, sleeping and now some egg laying
if you're saying you have 96 sq feet, then you'd be good to 9.6 chickens at 10 sq feet per chicken. although the extra 32 sq ft they have access to, you could go with another whole chicken and not have to cut one in half........
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, they have free access to go in and out as they want, so that helps with room to roam and not get all crabby and grumpy.........I have almost double the outside room per bird. Even this winter with part of the run covered, they will have, though I'll probably close the pop doors at dark just to prevent a draft from coming up from below them.
No, you couldn't do 24 in there.....
