Are your chickens happy in their chicken coop?
When you are looking for a home for your flock of chickens, keep in mind thatto feel comfy, healthy, and happy, you need to make sure you are giving them the right amount of space—both in their coops and in their runs. Let’s take a look:
While your chickens’ breed, size, personality, and the weather where you live will all play a factor, we here at OverEZ chicken coops recommend that chickenshave a minimum of 2 square feet per chicken in a coop and 4 square feet per chicken in a run/outside area.
Tips For Selecting A Chicken Coop
Coop Is Too Big
While it is important for your chickens to have enough room, a coop can be TOO large. Especially if you live in a climate with cold winters, if your birds have too much space they will have trouble generating enough heat in winter.
Think about it for yourself—it is much easier to snuggle up to a friend and warm up in a little tent than it would be with the same friend in a big, empty warehouse.
Coop Is Too Small
How are chickens like grumpy teenagers? They want space! Stuffing too many birds into a small space makes for a flock of grumpy girls. Overcrowding encourages bullying, egg-eating, and health problems.
In winter, too much snuggling and not enough space will cause humidity (remember—moisture is the chicken’s winter enemy!) and will put the birds at risk for frostbite.
Coop Is Just Right
The perfect chicken coop gives your flock enough room to get around, give them space, and still be cozy enough to let them gather together to create heat.
In our experience, that magic number is at least 2 square feet per bird.
Understanding Chicken Coop Size Recommendations
When you start looking for that perfect coop, watch out for the manufacturer’s recommendation for bird count, especially on cheap, multipurpose animal shelters from overseas. Their advertising and labeling is often very misleading and flat-out wrong.
A recent search on Amazon brought up three coops. While the pictures of the coops looked nice, the dimensions told a different story.
Coop A advertised itself as 58”, but the dimensions for the actual living space were only 27”x17”-- enough room for 1.7 chickens.
Coop B advertised at 69” and suitable for 3-5 chickens. Again, a closer look at the dimensions only showed enough space for 1.7.
Coop C advertised at a whopping 85” and suitable for 3-4 chickens and still only had enough space for 2.3 chickens. Yikes!
Why this disparity? All three of these coops included a run space along with a living space, so the manufacturers tried to pass off the run area as part of the roosting area.
See the OverEZ Chicken Coops For Exact Sizes:
Small Chicken Coop
Medium Chicken Coop
Large Chicken Coop
XL Chicken Coop
Jumbo Chicken Coop
Selecting A Chicken Run
Giving your girls time outside is important for their health and wellbeing—both physically and mentally. If you do not have the space or desire to let your birds roam freely through your yard, or are concerned about predators, achicken run gives a safe place for birds to wander and explore while keeping the rest of your yard neat.
While there probably is not a TOO BIG chicken run—the chickens will be happy with as much space as possible—there is definitely a TOO SMALL. Any run with less than 4 square feet per chicken will not provide enough room for healthy birds.
If we look at coops a, b, and c from above, only one actually provided enough space for the number of chickens it advertised, and just barely. Coop C’s 21” x 84.5” run allowed enough space for 3 chickens (even though it advertised for up to 4 birds.)
OverEZ Coops…just right
If you ask us (and our chickens) all the coops we build at OverEZ are just right. With accurate, transparent sizing and bird recommendations, highest quality materials and construction, and easy-to-assemble coops and runs, yourchickens will the happiest girls on the block. Check out our coops, runs, andotheraccessories.
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