How many chickens on 1/8 of an acre?

[amberchickens]

I’d like to get more chickens next year but I’m having trouble with the math.

Our chickens are in a coop at night and roam a pen that is approximately 1/8 of an acre during the day. That comes out to (according to a calculator…I’m terrible at math) about 5445 square feet of space. At 10 square feet of outdoor space per chicken, I could keep approximately 500 chickens?! Is that right?

I don’t WANT 500 chickens LOL. But I’d like to keep about 20 permanently (I have 8 now) and raise 25 next year for meat, so they would be there temporarily and I’m thinking of raising the meat chickens in a mobile tractor.

I want to make sure they aren’t going to feel crowded when they’re out and about during the day. Thoughts?

 

[aart]

The spacing recommendations are for coops and runs, not free range areas.

 

[amberchickens]

The spacing recommendations are for coops and runs, not free range areas.

They aren’t strictly free range for feeding purposes, if that makes a difference. The bulk of their diet is still feed. So they aren’t depending on the space for food. Sorry, I’m still new to this.

 

[SueT]

The more chickens, the sooner they will exhaust resources in their environment. Meaning digging up the grass etc. When that point is reached depends a lot on weather conditions. We have about 1500 sq ft in our run, for 11-12 chickens and it’s now a moonscape. If you have trees and bushes, that would be good. And plants they don’t eat will continue to grow.

 

[amberchickens]

The more chickens, the sooner they will exhaust resources in their environment. Meaning digging up the grass etc. When that point is reached depends a lot on weather conditions. We have about 1500 sq ft in our run, for 11-12 chickens and it’s now a moonscape. If you have trees and bushes, that would be good. And plants they don’t eat will continue to grow.

So far there aren’t any areas that have been damaged by the chickens but we are river front and also have had a lot of rainfall this summer. There are trees in their pen and I’ve had to mow twice to keep the whole thing from becoming a jungle when they grasses get high.

 

[Ridgerunner]

At 10 square feet of outdoor space per chicken, I could keep approximately 500 chickens?

That's a good question. If something on here doesn't make sese to you please ask. If you have a question someone else has the same question.

That's one of the problems of blindly using the guidelines you often see on here. They are set up for certain situations. A lot of them apply to a small backyard flock of a handful of hens all the same age where you have them confined to a small coop and run and are supplying all that they eat. The ten square feet per chicken in the run assumes you are spending some time managing the poop. I would not want to intensely manage the poop in a run for 500 chickens. These guidelines just don't apply to what you want to do. It would probably be big enough that they would not kill each other due to being overcrowded but there are other aspects to this. Like how hard you want to work.

That's an area roughly 55' x 100'. For the number of chickens you are talking about that poop is going to be so spread out that you should not have to manage any poop out there. Your coop is probably a different situation, you will need to manage poop in there. Depending some on your climate and rainfall you will probably not wipe out all of your grass in there. They are certainly not going to feel crowded.

If you haven't done it already, you might want to chat with the folks on the meat bird section of this forum before you build your tractor. There are some good people over there that use tractors, they might be able to help you out.