How many chickens can fit in a coop

• How Much Room Do Chickens Need? Do I need Lots of Land to Keep Chickens?
• How Big Does A Chicken Coop Need To Be?
• How Big Should A Chicken Nesting Box Be?
  • THE BEST NESTING BOX FOR CHICKENS
• How Much Space Do Chickens Need To Roam?
  • The Best Large Chicken Coop
• Reasons To Give Your Chickens More Space Than They “Need”
• How Much Space Does A Chicken Need To Be Free Range?

Before we ever entertained the idea of keeping chickens in our garden, we were long under the impression that you need lots of lands to keep chickens- ideally, at least an acre of grass.

Fortunately, this isn’t the case (unless you are planning on keeping thousands of them!), and you’d be surprised by the actual amount of room chickens need.

The number of rooms chickens need really depends on a few key points. Firstly, are you intending to allow your chickens to free roam?

Secondly, how many hours of the day do you intend to keep your chickens in their coop?

Finally, how many chickens do you intend on keeping?

Let’s start with the first question…

How Much Room Do Chickens Need? Do I need Lots of Land to Keep Chickens?

In short, no.

Clearly, this depends on how many chickens you intend on keeping, so let’s use a little example.
I’d guess that most people who want to keep chickens for the first time would look to get around six, so let’s use six chickens for this example.

Now let’s also presume that the chickens are kept in a coop during nighttime and are left to roam during the daytime.

The short answer would be that six chickens would need a coop that’s at least 18 square feet and a run of at least 90 square feet.

So in total, that would mean you’d need just under 110 square feet to keep six chickens. [source]

We give our chickens a lot more room than this, and we will discuss our setup later, however as a bare minimum, 110 square feet will get you started.

So to answer our original questions: “Can I keep chickens in my garden, or do I need acres of land?”. Providing you have at least an 11-foot by 10-foot garden, you can easily keep chickens in your backyard.

However, if you put 12 chickens in this field below, we’re sure they would be the most faithful hens you’ve ever seen!

How Big Does A Chicken Coop Need To Be?

• Easy to access; designed with two doors, an open/close nesting box, and sliding doors making access easy for your hens
• Easy to maintain; removable bottom tray which makes cleaning the coop, roost, and nesting box easy
• Safe; comes with robust metal wire fencing to keep pests out and two doors with metal locking systems

See Price on Amazon

To clarify before we answer this in detail- a chicken coop is the chickens’ house where they go to roost in the evening (or during the rain!).

This does not include their run or any other space in which they can roam.

Inside a coop, you will find the floor (which we cover with sawdust and straw) and a roosting/perching space.

The actual chicken coop needs to be at least 3 square feet per chicken. So following on with our example of six chickens, the coop needs to be at least 18 square feet.

Now you might think with chicken coops, the bigger, the better? Well, this certainly isn’t the case.

Large chicken coops with only a small number of chickens can actually be bad because the chickens can’t generate enough heat to keep the coop warm.

The other key item inside the coop is the roosting/perching area.

So in our example, you would need a roosting pole that is 60 inches long (5 feet).

You will probably find that your chickens need less roosting space than this because they will huddle together very closely during the night- however, again, it’s best to err on the side of caution.

How Big Should A Chicken Nesting Box Be?

Little Giant Single Plastic Nesting Box With Perch

• Quality Materials – High-density plastics
• Easy To Clean
• Includes Perch

See Price on Amazon

In addition to a coop, you will need to ensure you have enough space to fix a nesting box to the back or side of your coop.

You can either have a large ‘open-plan’ nesting box or separate individual nesting boxes. We have a single ‘open-plan’ nesting box; however, we are thinking about changing this and providing the girls with individual nesting boxes to give them some more privacy.

Regardless of your choice, you will need a foot cubed of space per chicken in your nesting box.

So continuing with our example, you would need a nesting box six feet long by 1 foot deep for six chickens. And if you have the option, try to make individual nesting boxes. Your girls will thank you for it later!

To learn more about nesting boxes and what to do with your freshly laid eggs, read here.

How Much Space Do Chickens Need To Roam?

• EASY TO ASSEMBLE! Built by Amish-trained craftsmen
• Houses up to 15 chickens
• Quality Materials

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In terms of roaming, each chicken, at a minimum, will require 15 square feet. So if you have 6 chickens, you will need around 90 square feet (6×15).

This isn’t much land at all. A ten-foot-long by a nine-foot wide strip of grass would meet this. But, if you want to make your chickens happy, the more room you give them, the better!

We wouldn’t leave our chickens with only 15 square feet each- we make sure our chickens have at least 25 square feet.

Now, where and how you allow your chickens to roam is up to you. You can choose to create a run, tractor (portable run), or just allow them to free roam in your garden.

It’s up to you, and each has advantages and disadvantages.

Because they are filthy…

Also, if you give them more room to roam, they will have more fun. We gave our 12 chickens over 3000 square feet to roam in, and each day is like a huge adventure for them!

Reasons To Give Your Chickens More Space Than They “Need”

You may have seen the way some chickens in commercial operations are kept. They are in tight quarters, beak to beak (or lack thereof), and they are pumped full of antibiotics.

Why?

Because when chickens don’t have enough room to be chickens, they pass diseases back and forth.

Small spaces are prone to attract mold, mildew, and bacteria and cause upper respiratory infections, among other things. These types of conditions also promote the spread of parasites amongst your flock.

It’s polite to treat your chickens like you would any other beloved pet by giving them room to stretch their wings and work out their pecking order as nature intended.

If you’ve built a structure and have found the area to be damp, and the droppings are piling up, it’s time to consider an expansion before your chooks get sick.

How Much Space Does A Chicken Need To Be Free Range?

All of this talk about how much room chickens need leads us to an interesting debate here at The Happy Chicken Coop.

We were struggling to decide exactly how much space a chicken needs to be classed as ‘free-range.’

We can look at legal definitions. For instance, in the EU, a hen needs a single square foot of floor space inside and around 13 square feet of outdoor space.

However, the law doesn’t stipulate how often the chickens need to go outside- it’s at the farmer’s discretion.

And in the US, the Department of Agriculture defines free-range as a chicken having access to outside, but it doesn’t stipulate how much space they require or how long they need to be outside…

But, taking commercial farms to one side- in terms of backyard chicken keepers, what counts as free-range?

We’d class free-range as chickens that each has at least 25 square feet of outside space. Ideally, this would be without a run keeping them in.

However, this isn’t practical because foxes and other predators are trying to catch them.

So there you have both the short version and the long version to exactly how much room chickens need.

Leave us a comment below, letting us know what you think counts as a free-range chicken…

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