How much space should a chicken have?

[Chicken Lover!]

Hello everyone,
I own two chickens, (Soon going to get another 1 or 2) and I was wondering how much space should chickens get in their coop? How often should you clean out their coop?
Thank you, I appreciate all your help

 

[Fanci Feathers Marans]

General rule of thumb is 4sq feet per hen inside the coop, and 10sq feet in the run. I clean mine out once a week in summer, and every other week in winter. The more space they have, the less you will have to clean.

 

[Chicken Lover!]

Ok, thank you so much!

 

[21hens-incharge]

Of course your climate will play a big part in how much space as will the breeds of chickens.

If you get a lot of wet or snow larger would be better. I find that mine tend to stay inside on icky days.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You might follow the link in my signature to get some of my thoughts about space. I don’t give you hard and fast numbers, there are way too many variables for any one square foot number to work for all of us. I try to give you things to think about.

Since you are already thinking about adding chickens, you need extra room for the integration process, let alone just for more chickens once they are integrated. How old will they be, the ones you have and the ones you are adding? If they are pretty young you may need extra room. That’s just one example of a variable.

Don’t just think in terms of space in the coop. How much room will they have outside of the coop and how often will it be available? The more they are locked in the coop itself the bigger it needs to be.

I favor making it bigger than the minimum you think you need. There are several reasons covered in that article, but a major one is flexibility. Extra room can make it a while lot easier to deal with issues that come up. That can make your life a lot easier. Something not directly related to room but make it convenient for you. Don’t just think about the chickens, think about what you can do to make your life easier when taking care of them. Your comfort and convenience can make the whole chicken experience so much more pleasant.

How often do you need to clean the coop? Some people do some type of cleaning daily, I clean my coop bedding out once every three or four years. I have a droppings board that might get scraped once a week or once every six weeks, depending on how many chickens I have and how wet the weather is. Once again there is not a standard cut and dried answer that works for all of us. Those pesky variables. Will you have a droppings board, how many chickens will you ultimately have, how much time do they spend outside, what kind of bedding do you use, how big is the coop, and so many more questions.

Before I could even begin to guess how big your coop should be I’d need to know how many will you ultimately have, will you be integrating new chicks or grown chickens in the future (maybe as replacements), your general location so I would have a handle on weather winter and summer, and what your outside will look like and how often it is available.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Unless you live in a place that limits the number of chickens you can have , i recommend that you build as big as possible . Everyone usually gets more when chicken math hits!