Square feet per chicken in portable coop

Hi I have an old 8x14 pig trailer that I want to repurpose as a portable coop. This would be the laying hens summer home and would only be in there overnight well door would be open during the day so they would have access . Ill put in lots of roosts and nest boxes.  How many ladies could I keep humanely in there?  They would get moved daily and have lots of fresh cow pats to break up and fresh grass to graze on during the day .


Thanks

Hi Jeff,
I believe you can keep a lot more chickens in a smaller area if they have access to the outside and are just sleeping there. I had a 6x6 mobile coop with 30 hens and a rooster. The plans suggested you could fit as many as 50. It sounds crazy, like each chicken barely gets 1 square foot... but if you looked in there, they would be all snuggled together and rarely filled half.

If you went with the lower number of birds 31 for 36sqft... then your trailer of 112 sqft... could hold perhaps 95 birds?

***Edit - if the birds are going to be staying inside... then I would lower that number by a lot.

Also... there is a big difference between white leghorns and jersey giants :)

What kind were you thinking of getting? Because the size of the birds will affect that some. Mine were black australorps. Good sized, but not the biggest.

Thanks Matt, very helpful.  Great point on breed. Ive not settled on a breed yet. That may be the hardest question of all.  I prefer larger birds as they are less prone to flying over electronet and have more meat when they eventually go into soup pot. Also  need to be active foragers as my main goal is pasture management behind my cattle herd. Breeds I am considering are Marans, Barred Rocks, Chanteclairs(probably too small though) and  Icelandics . I need to do more research this winter.

To some degree, this comes down to quality of life, both human and chicken.

1. Chickens *prefer* to perch - it was an evolutionary survival trait. The Humans I know,  prefer not to have to crawl around in chicken shit.

So you need to not just decide an arbitrary square feel per bird, but how you can organize it so that they have 9" of perch space, and generally 18" to 24" between perches. Even if you go for perches of different heights (which chickens do seem to like), you don't want to have upper chickens pooping on lower chickens during the night.

Similarly, I strongly recommend perches that can be removed easily so you can clean.

2. I suspect Eastern Ontario can get some pretty hot summers. Chickens generate a fair bit of body heat, so that is also going to affect your final number. The better you design the ventilation, the higher the density that can be managed. Similarly, if it's hot, the birds will want more space between them when perching. Will you have electrical hook up for operating fans?

3. Make sure you monitor for parasites. A friend was having problems getting his chickens to go to bed and I could see lice on the perches - duh - I wouldn't want to go to bed to get eaten either! Higher density coupled with exposure to wild birds will increase that risk.

4. Ultimately, the chickens will choose. If they don't like the housing situation, they will resist going to bed. If there's lots of natural forage during the day, and you train them with a bedtime snack of chicken feed, that will encourage them to come home.

5. Just because the birds are huddled on one side as Matt has seen, doesn't always mean you can add more birds. They may just all want the shady side?  Or the side with the nicer breeze? Or who knows what other subtle difference the birds have a preference for that we Humans don't recognize.

Hopefully these ideas will help with your planning, even though I can't narrow it down to a perfect "square footage".

I second all that Jay is saying.

Definitely design it so it can be cleaned and you can reach all the corners. Either make it tall enough or install extra doors or something. Treating for mites or finding a stray egg doesn't have to be so hard if the coop is designed correctly.

Extra agree to ventilation. I had my chickens all summer in a mobile coop up off the ground with a mesh floor and 2 sides just mesh. They did great. I then put them in a greenhouse... and they all started getting sick before I figured out how to ventilate properly.

I also extra agree about the chickens using space. I mention that they rarely used more than half, because I don't want people to expect them to measure out 9" on the perches and have chickens space themselves out. They just hop on where there is room... or where they want to make room on the perch. Some of mine would scatter more, but the core would snuggle together.

8x14 gives you 112sq ft. I would be comfortable with 50-60 layers in there, I don't want any stress from crowding on laying hens. Even though you are planning on them only being in there to sleep, I would leave enough space so they can stay in all day if needed. When I move chickens into any new space they stay in full time for a couple days. Or if I suddenly have predator pressure, again they may stay in for a few days until I can sort out my predator problems. I don't like to let layers free range until noon, after they have laid most of their eggs for the day, otherwise they may go find a nice tuft of grass or log to lay under. Ventilation is your friend. if most of the bottom of the mobile coop can be mesh that poop falls through, that saves you a lot of cleaning and it will help a lot to evenly distribute manure. If you have layers in a mobile coop you want nest boxes to be accessible from outside the coop.

My layers now get a permanent coop to free range from. I found moving them to a new coop stresses them out and they may stop laying on me. I have 2 chicken tractors and 3 chickshaws that I now only use for growing stock. I hatch my own chicks, butcher my extra roosters, sell some pullets and sell my year old layers every year. my tractors and chickshaws are all 6x6x2 ft, 36sq ft. I can fit a lot of small chicks in them but have to divide them more as they grow. I can fit about 20-25 pullets in a tractor or chickshaw until a couple weeks before they start laying.  Roosters, no more than 12-15 by the time I am ready to butcher them, 3-4 months and they dress out 3-3.5 lbs. So pretty small birds.

The practice of keeping chickens a confined barn on sawdust, or another sorbent is called the Dutch deep litter system, calling for the litter to be at least 8" deep. It's important to use a litter that has some residual moisture in it, as the birds in their daily scratching, dusting, moving will mix the manure into the litter and start the breakdown.  The breakdown (composting) produces heat as a by product helping to keep the birds warm in winter.  The heavier breeds should get 1.5-2 square feet per bird, and 1 nest per 5 layers