Everyone who has existed on earth long enough to experience more than a single fashion cycle has seen them come in and out of style, oversized sweaters with hems that droop to mid-thigh, sleeves that hang past the fingertips, and enough room in the body to hide a couple fugitive cats in there with you. Not usually very figure-flattering, generally far from cute, but somehow, no matter how tailored the in look of the moment, one always seems to hang out in the back of a drawer somewhere to be pulled out when needed.
Warm, comfortable, easy to put on and off, capable of layering, forgiving of dietary lapses, bad days, and 2am emergencies when you need to throw something over your PJs and appear in public without proper preparations. I slept in mine one nasty night last winter when a storm knocked my power out and the indoor temperatures plunged into the 40's.
But why am I talking about sweaters on a chicken forum?
Because the same over-sized forgiveness of that sweater that would only actually fit an NFL Nose Tackle is just as valuable in your chicken-keeping facilities as it is in your wardrobe.
My Little Monitor Coop fits perfectly. It's tailored exactly right to house 4 hens with all the numbers worked out precisely to the suggested minimums. It's cute -- or at least it was when it was brand new and freshly painted. It even managed to successfully house 5 hens for the better part of a year in the way that your cute, spandex leggings manage to cover your body in January after the Christmas treats have been disposed of and salad has become your daily lunch.
It's my least-used coop, and not only because it's the oldest and in need of repair. Pushed down to the bare minimums, it doesn't have any more flexibility than your smallest pair of skinny jeans. I can house 4 hens in it. I can brood 8-12 chicks in it. I could let a broody raise a clutch in it. Nothing else.
Every other chicken-related piece of equipment I own is over-sized.
My Outdoor Brooder isn't a little plastic tub or even a small horsetrough, it's a 4'x8' redneck monstrosity that I converted from someone else's old run that used to be attached to her prefab. 12 chicks lived there comfortably until 20 weeks -- long enough for me to choose the ones I wanted to keep and the ones I wanted to sell without having to rush because of crowding-induced behavior problems. 25 chicks had more than enough room for 5 weeks until they were off heat and ready to integrate. Then I stuck 4 cull cockerels into it to wait to either be sold or butchered -- with a cobbled-together 16x16 run and no fighting because they had plenty of elbow room.
My run is 100 feet of Premier 1 electric poultry netting -- enclosing 625 square feet more or less depending on how it's configured and if I use the coop itself as one wall or not. That's theoretically enough space for over 60 chickens (and I did once have ~ 45, but over half of them were juveniles). When a friend who had promised me some chicks she'd hatched "after your new coop is finished" suddenly found herself putting her house on the market and needing to reduce the chicken population, I was able to stick an integration pen made from a oversized dog crate inside the perimeter and accept my 4 gift chickens instead of passing them up.
Likewise that same dog crate became an outdoor broody breaker. There was no room for a broody breaker in the pared-down minimalism of the Little Monitor Coop, but plenty of room inside that fence.
Neuchickenstein, my 16x16 open air coop has been housing 2 cockerels and their 21 ladies through the Avian Flu Lockdown without fuss or fighting, even without access to that run, and I still have plenty of room for an integration pen, a broody breaker, and a soon-to-be added "maternity ward" inside.
I bought a 12lb hanging feeder when I only had 5 hens and could refill it once a week on Sundays when I was working overtime. It's still useful now with the large flock -- though I have an even larger feeder too that holds 25lbs. I can't get 23 birds through a week anymore even with both those feeders, but I was able to prep for an ice storm and let them go 3 days without visiting the coop. I'd love to have larger waterers but hit my limit in only being able to lift 3 gallon buckets, not 5 gallon buckets.
Today when I'm writing this I've been sick for a month and unable to do normal maintenance on Neuchickenstein's deep litter. It really *needs* to have the litter forked back up from the bottom of the slope back under the roosts and to have another couple Gorilla carts of wood chips added, but with the extra space and the massive ventilation the odor isn't actually a problem yet -- just a minor note that the coop really does need some attention soon.
Just like that over-sized sweater, my oversized chicken facilities are providing the forgiving flexibility that covers up flaws and keeps things working even at 2am with my PJs underneath it.
