Why does every single retail coop seller lie about how many chickens their coops can hold?

[KyCoop]

If someone could or would get a photo of 6 standard size hens INSIDE a prefab and send it to maybe TS corporate and all the others to show them they should not be selling this product to new chicken folk that don't understand what they are buying is false advertising.

If some does get a photo, I would print several and tape them up and on the displays.

Whomevers hens will only have to mildly be annoyed for a few mins. But I could save a newby and their new chicks a lot of time , money and frustration.

 

[thistlewick]

If someone could or would get a photo of 6 standard size hens INSIDE a prefab and send it to maybe TS corporate and all the others to show them they should not be selling this product to new chicken folk that don't understand what they are buying is false advertising.

If some does get a photo, I would print several and tape them up and on the displays.

Whomevers hens will only have to mildly be annoyed for a few mins. But I could save a newby and their new chicks a lot of time , money and frustration.

i genuinely feel like people are so ignorant though, they just won't care if they're crowded. they think "oh they're just chickens" and don't think twice about their own well being.

Speaking of chickens well being, its 9:55 and I'm 25 minutes late to letting mine out! (I slept in today bwahah)

I need to do more on this subject though; my ADHD got me so fired up and then a lot of steam let out. But I do care a lot. I want to help fix this.

 

[Chubbicthe2nd]

When advocating for change, don't forget the China problem. Workers not treated well in American factories, and pollution to environment, so govt raise standards higher and higher.... So companies move factories from USA to China, where workers are treated like subhuman slaves. Like, 1000x worse, with 1,000 times the pollution too. So much suffering in China from the pollution there. My friends lost their babies to the pollution there. The human cost there is higher than Americans can comprehend.

If government is making it more expensive to raise chickens by requiring people buy a fancier coop, it just means less people raise backyard chickens and then have to rely more on factory eggs. And we know how the chickens are treated in egg factories. 1000x worse and than a cramped prefab.

Sometimes cause and effect is not so simple. Regulations can actually drive out moderate solutions to be replaced by really terrible one. Something to keep in mind when one is trying to save the world.

 

[thistlewick]

Increasing the space requirements does not equal a "fancier coop" at all.

I don't know how you magicked that up in your mind, but having 10 square foot per chicken in a run says *ZERO* about h o w you're keeping them.

What I'm proposing isn't about people buying anything.

I'm proposing that manufacturers stop lying about how many chickens their coops can hold for healthy chickens.

 

[McChooky]

Coops don't have to cost a lot of money. I had to buy hardware cloth, screws, nails,hinges, latches and tarp( .35 per day X 4 yrs)

 

[McChooky]

i genuinely feel like people are so ignorant though, they just won't care if they're crowded. they think "oh they're just chickens" and don't think twice about their own well being.

Speaking of chickens well being, its 9:55 and I'm 25 minutes late to letting mine out! (I slept in today bwahah)

I need to do more on this subject though; my ADHD got me so fired up and then a lot of steam let out. But I do care a lot. I want to help fix this.

People don't know the difference between a rooster and a hen now so its easy to fool them.They'll buy a rabbit hutch for 6 chickens

 

[Shadrach]

Why has NO ONE ANYWHERE done the due diligence of simply researching a TEENY TINY BIT and discovering the 10 square feet rule. Why has NO ONE gone beyond the '4 square feet' of *commercial broiler guidelines*????

I am pissed about this - just was browsing around this morning... I don't need a new coop but I enjoy looking at them and how cute they are and just enjoy 'window shopping' for chicken things as a morning coffee routine and man I am irritated in the extreme.

How can we help change this? How can we as a community help *CHANGE THE DIALOGUE* and get the correct information out there?


If we can somehow manage to change the understanding, we're going to have a LOT LESS PROBLEMS with backyard chickens. The more room these birds are allowed to have, the happier and healthier they are. Full stop.


People just simply DO NOT HAVE this information - because every single business that is selling chicken coops has the 4 square foot rule in place, not the 10 square foot one. How can we disseminate all the knowledge built up here? Sitting on a forum isn't enough. It's just simply not enough. What is the greatest avenue for getting information out to people? Is it freaking Martha Stewart? lol

Just catching the people who *happen* to come here and ask questions just isn't enough. The knowledge built up here should be COMMON knowledge at this point, not some mysterious gatekept chicken secrets held fast only if you're willing to google and make a forum account and be willing to learn, etc etc

The fact that no one outside chicken nerds really knows any of this needs to change. I'm disgusted that the people trying to sell coops by and large don't even care to learn more than what is "industry standard for commercial farms".

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

I am going to actually try and research and figure out what I can do, to help educate. These forums are too passive. It's not enough.

I'm with you 100%! I bought this coop as an emergency measure. They say it will hold 15 full sized chickens. Well, they're lying. I got 22 in there at one point!

https://www.solwayrecycling.co.uk/shop/pig-poultry/hen-houses/standard-eco-hen-ark

Look, I'm not joking. There are 20 in this picture, some on floor some in nest boxes.
They all fitted in. Not one of these chickens was forced to roost in this coop. In fact there were at the time two other coops, not as comfortable, they could have used. The roosting bickering was minimal as was the pecking of the hens on the floor by the hens on the roost bars.

Before the fingers hit the keyboard this wasn't a situation I was happy with and it's not the situation now.

This is now. Five birds, six if you're fair about Henry's (rooster) giant backside. There is four square feet per bird in this picture and the coop looks half empty.

Years ago here in the UK the standard for free rangers was set by space on the roost bar, not the size of the coop and there's a problem right there. Going by roost bar space is fine if the chicken have hopefully a very large run they can access from dawn to dusk. They just use the coops for sleeping and egg laying, unless you're Henry of course who slips of to bed early to get a bit of peace before the hens start bickering about who sleeps where.
Now this is the UK and the climate, I'm led to believe, is moderate so the chickens where I am do come out every day into a run from dawn to dusk and later onto an acre of field for a couple of hours.
If one lives in more extreme climates and one may feel the need to confine chickens to a coop, then I haven't see anything on the market that I consider gives adequate space for maybe months of confinement and the reality is one shouldn't even be looking at these prefab coops in such circumstances.
I think the majority of the prefab coops get bought by urban chicken keepers with perhaps three or four hens which are part pets, part egg supply and most have runs
The manufactures are not lying. They say a particular coop will hold so many hens and all those I've seen do exactly that. The manufactures do not say you can keep that many hens permenantly confined in such a space. That responsibility lies with the keeper.
Any legislation, say four square feet per bird in the coop and ten square feet in the run is still woefully inadequate in run size but okay for birds that get out every day. Push that out to ten square feet per bird in the coop and an awful lot of people are not going to want to keep backyard chickens because they won't have a backyard left.
I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but it is a thing and if some governmet agency made a law (for the chickens welfare of course) that one had to have ten square feet per bird in the coop and say three hundered square feet in the run, then that's pretty much goodby to urban chicken keeping.

 

[HollowOfWisps]

I'm with you 100%! I bought this coop as an emergency measure. They say it will hold 15 full sized chickens. Well, they're lying. I got 22 in there at one point!

https://www.solwayrecycling.co.uk/shop/pig-poultry/hen-houses/standard-eco-hen-ark

Look, I'm not joking. There are 20 in this picture, some on floor some in nest boxes.
They all fitted in. Not one of these chickens was forced to roost in this coop. In fact there were at the time two other coops, not as comfortable, they could have used. The roosting bickering was minimal as was the pecking of the hens on the floor by the hens on the roost bars.
View attachment 4000065

Before the fingers hit the keyboard this wasn't a situation I was happy with and it's not the situation now.

This is now. Five birds, six if you're fair about Henry's (rooster) giant backside. There is four square feet per bird in this picture and the coop looks half empty.
View attachment 4000069
Years ago here in the UK the standard for free rangers was set by space on the roost bar, not the size of the coop and there's a problem right there. Going by roost bar space is fine if the chicken have hopefully a very large run they can access from dawn to dusk. They just use the coops for sleeping and egg laying, unless you're Henry of course who slips of to bed early to get a bit of peace before the hens start bickering about who sleeps where.
Now this is the UK and the climate, I'm led to believe, is moderate so the chickens where I am do come out every day into a run from dawn to dusk and later onto an acre of field for a couple of hours.
If one lives in more extreme climates and one may feel the need to confine chickens to a coop, then I haven't see anything on the market that I consider gives adequate space for maybe months of confinement and the reality is one shouldn't even be looking at these prefab coops in such circumstances.
I think the majority of the prefab coops get bought by urban chicken keepers with perhaps three or four hens which are part pets, part egg supply and most have runs
The manufactures are not lying. They say a particular coop will hold so many hens and all those I've seen do exactly that. The manufactures do not say you can keep that many hens permenantly confined in such a space. That responsibility lies with the keeper.
Any legislation, say four square feet per bird in the coop and ten square feet in the run is still woefully inadequate in run size but okay for birds that get out every day. Push that out to ten square feet per bird in the coop and an awful lot of people are not going to want to keep backyard chickens because they won't have a backyard left.
I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but it is a thing and if some governmet agency made a law (for the chickens welfare of course) that one had to have ten square feet per bird in the coop and say three hundered square feet in the run, then that's pretty much goodby to urban chicken keeping.

The problem is that here in the US people buy these coops and the run that comes with them then keep their chickens confined in them 24/7. Or if they do let them “range” it’s only a few hours a week if that so they are still kept in that setup for at least 20+ hours a day. I was just at one of the local farm stores looking at their prefab coops and their run was not much bigger than their coop. If someone kept the amount of chickens recommended by the manufacturer confined in the coop and run 24/7 it would be less than 2 sq. Ft of both coop and run space total for those chickens. That is no better than factory farming, but again that’s in the US. It’s one thing to use the small coop if you let them actually out and about during the day I have no gripes with that, but keeping chickens penned up in a tinder box sized coop and run 24/7 would be like keeping a dog in a crate 24/7 or a horse in a stall 24/7.

 

[Shadrach]

The problem is that here in the US people buy these coops and the run that comes with them then keep their chickens confined in them 24/7. Or if they do let them “range” it’s only a few hours a week if that so they are still kept in that setup for at least 20+ hours a day. I was just at one of the local farm stores looking at their prefab coops and their run was not much bigger than their coop. If someone kept the amount of chickens confined in the coop and run 24/7 it would be less than 2 sq. Ft of both coop and run space total for those chickens. That is no better than factory farming, but again that’s in the US. It’s one thing to use the small coop if you let them actually out and about during the day I have no gripes with that, but keeping chickens penned up in a tinder box sized coop and run 24/7 would be like keeping a dog in a crate 24/7 or a horse in a stall 24/7.

I agree with you. A lot of that goes on here in the UK. What I'm pointing out is it's not really a coop problem, it's a what is an acceptable way of keeping chickens problem.
My view would also wipe out most urban backyard chicken keeping because my experience tells me at least an acre per group is a reasonable size for what is essentially a foraging creature. I can't see that going down well.
The trouble is not everyone sees things the way I do and there are plenty, although not the majority I'm pleased to say, who think keeping chickens in a coop with less than four square metres per bird and maybe ten square feet in the run is quite acceptable. Can't argue when they say, "well it's better than battery conditions."

 

[HollowOfWisps]

I agree with you. A lot of that goes on here in the UK. What I'm pointing out is it's not really a coop problem, it's a what is an acceptable way of keeping chickens problem.
My view would also wipe out most urban backyard chicken keeping because my experience tells me at least an acre per group is a reasonable size for what is essentially a foraging creature. I can't see that going down well.
The trouble is not everyone sees things the way I do and there are plenty, although not the majority I'm pleased to say, who think keeping chickens in a coop with less than four square metres per bird and maybe ten square feet in the run is quite acceptable. Can't argue when they say, "well it's better than battery conditions."

I 100% agree.