Raising chickens can be a rewarding venture, offering your family fresh eggs and natural pest control. When planning your chicken coop, the number of chickens you intend to keep is the determining factor in finding the appropriate size for your coop. A well-sized chicken coop ensures your flock has enough space to thrive, leading to healthier and happier chickens. Keep reading to understand how to choose the perfect chicken coop size for your needs.
How Many Chickens Does Your Family Want?
As mentioned above, the single determining factor in how large your chicken coop should be is how many chickens you’ll raise. If you overcrowd your chickens, they’ll become stressed, less productive, and produce less eggs. Each chicken should have about 3-4 square feet of space inside of your coop to remain productive and stress-free.
To determine the number of chickens your family needs, think about how often you’ll eat eggs and if you’ll be sharing or selling them with others. On average, a hen will lay an egg every 24-26 hours. That means a family of four that eats an egg for breakfast every day should have at least four chickens. If you like to bake, have a larger family, eat eggs more often, or want to start selling or giving eggs to others, you’ll want to raise more chickens.
How Much Yard Space Can You Devote to Your Chickens?
After you determine how many chickens you’d like to raise in an ideal circumstance, you’ll need to see if your yard can actually accommodate that many chickens. Every chicken coop should be attached to a chicken run for your birds to roam around and forage bugs. You’ll need to plan for your chicken run to be at least an additional 8 square feet of space outside of your coop for each chicken.
In total, you’ll need approximately 12 square feet of yard space for every chicken you raise. If you can only devote 100 square feet of property to raising chickens, you can raise, at most, 8 chickens. Ideally, you’d have more space than you need to accommodate the size of the flock you desire. You can always make your chicken run larger.
Determining the Ideal Size for Your Chicken Coop
Using the information above, you can now determine the ideal size for your chicken coop. Let’s say your family are avid bakers and you think you could make a few extra dollars a week selling eggs to neighbors. Because of your higher desire for eggs, you would like to raise 16 chickens. That means you’d need a 64 sq ft chicken coop, or 8’x8’ (4 sq ft for each chicken). However, you’d also need a 128 sq ft chicken run for a total of 192 sq ft of yard space.
Let’s say you can only devote 120 sq ft of yard space to your chickens. That means you’ll have to settle for a flock of 10 chickens. In this scenario, 40 sq ft of your space will be taken up by a 5’x8’ chicken coop and the other 80 sq ft will be your chicken run.
Order Your Chicken Coop Today
Now that you know how big of a chicken coop you need, check out some of the chicken coop designs offered by Space Makers Sheds. We have on-lot inventory in Bear, DE so you can purchase a coop right away, or you can contact us to order a custom chicken coop, hand-built to your specifications and delivered to your property.