If you are considering keeping backyard chickens to provide fresh eggs for your family, it’s important to know how many hens you’ll need. If you don’t have a source for excess eggs you’ll want to make sure you don’t have too many hens. Maintaining a flock also means an extra chore, the more birds you have the more work there is, so it’s best to start sensibly. The rule of thumb is two standard-size hens per family member. This will keep your refrigerator stocked with an ample supply of eggs every week. Note: Although starting with a small flock, make sure you buy or build a coop that will allow you to add more birds later. More space is always better than not enough. Expanding coops size can be an expensive afterthought.
The subject of how much space per bird is often a question of great debate. There are minimum requirement guidelines, but most chicken keepers would agree that 1 foot per chicken is a cramped environment. If your flock is not allowed to free range during the day and is kept constantly in cramped quarters, you’re going to find yourself scrambling around looking for a way to separate the docile birds from the aggressive ones. A pecking order is established in all flocks, confined or not. If there isn’t enough room for the weaker birds to escape trouble, you’ll be pretty frazzled by their battles and the sometimes the unfortunate outcome. You can get away with a small housing space if your chickens will be free-range during the day. When it’s all said and done, at the end of each day there is usually only one argument… the nests. This problem is usually resolved quickly by the boss hens who choose first, leaving the weaker birds with what’s left. The best living arrangement for your flock is to offer them space, and the more the better. Happy chickens are those who are free from conflict. Happy chickens are healthy chickens, and that means better egg production. Recommended Space per Chicken, My Opinion… At a minimum, 2 square feet of floor space in the coop if your chickens are allowed to free range or have a fenced area attached to the housing area. If your birds are confined all the time, 3-4 square feet of floor space. You won’t gain anything by trying to house too many birds in a small area, the truth is, happy birds fill the egg basket plain and simple.
It depends on whether or not they are LUCKY. Hens on a mass-production egg farm can expect an unpleasant one or two-year lifespan before they are slaughtered. Not a rosy picture, but wait, it’s even worse if a chicken hatches as a rooster. One may be somewhat luckier than the other… but quite frankly I’m not sure which one. Backyard chickens can live eight to ten years in an ideal situation. Meaning, quality grub, green fixins, fresh water, shelter, and space to exercise their instinctual behaviors. Of course, there are always chickens with that special gusto for life who continue scratching in the dirt far beyond the norm. The older a hen gets the fewer eggs she lays. Her production cycle may even cease altogether. But this is just a part of their change of life, the same as ours. Chickens grow old, but let’s not overlook their other valuable ageless contributions. They provide an endless amount of fertilizer for your garden and eat ticks, flies, mosquitoes, and the creepy crawlers that destroy the foliage in your yard. Chickens are hard workin’ bug eating machines that are quite happy to earn their keep… at every stage of their life.
TBN Ranch Chicken Keeping Resources 