How many chickens for my urban coop?
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Question by SuperN: How many chickens for my urban coop?
I’m getting ready to order some chicks for my back yard coop. I have a caged run area (with top) of 6×10 ft, and a raised (insulated) coop with nesting boxes 6x4x5-ish. I’m getting Buff Orpingtons, which are a larger breed chicken. They will eventually provide eggs for my family of 5, the overflow easily donated to friends, family members, neighbors, food bank, etc.
My question is, how many do I get? I don’t want to be shorted on eggs, but then again I’d rather not be drowning in them! Any other suggestions for my first Urban Chicken experience? They will be kept inside until larger and feathered enough to handle our Iowa winter.
What do you think? Answer below!
2 Responses to How many chickens for my urban coop?
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your question should be about the math. find out how big one chicken will get. i think it about one cubic foot per chicken so divide the area by one chicken and you should be about to get an accurate number.
kept in side make sure there is room to move need to exercise them chickens.
SEA D
October 27, 2011 at 8:19 pm
I’m an urban chicken farmer myself, and the rule of thumb I heard was 2 sq ft per chicken. My are free range in the yard, so the coop size was moot anyway.
There’s a couple of things I want to mention. First, your city may limit how many chickens you can actually have. Where I live, the limit is 3. You’d certain want to check first before investing in a bunch of chickens.
Secondly, being that I’m an old farm girl, I knew that I’d probably lose a couple of chickens before they became good layers which is why I started with 5…and that’s exactly what happened. One died at 7 days, and the second died inexplicably at 5 months, leaving me with the three chickens that were my limit. When ordering your chicks, keep in mind that one may turn out to be a rooster and one (or more) may die. If you end up with too many, you can always sell the extras on Craig’s List as pullets which typically fetch between $ 15-20 each.
So, production, mine are leghorns and lay one egg a day and have ever since they were about 4 1/2 months old. Now that they are 18 months old, one of them is going into “molt” and only laying one egg every other day.Until then, I had been averaging about 7 dozen eggs a month, and selling 4 of those dozen of those to neighbors for about the cost of the chicken feed 🙂
hope this helps!
Jeanbug
October 27, 2011 at 8:54 pm