Lesson 1124 – Smelly Chicken Coop – what a neighbor can do.

I recently got this email from a reader who is having problems with his close neighbor’s smelly chicken coop. Read the letter, my reply, and if you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Problems with backyard poultry smell

I’m hoping you can help me with a desperate quandary I have regarding my neighbors.  They have a coop and it is SO smelly.  The backyards are not big and they do have it as far away as they can, maybe 50 yards away from my backyard (maybe less), but the smell is so atrocious that I can’t use my backyard, screened in porch or even open the windows in the back of the house because it smells so bad.  I spent the evening yesterday cooking in the kitchen with the only window in the kitchen shut because I couldn’t take the smell anymore.  It was barely perceptible last year but this year it seems to be omnipresent especially in the afternoons and evenings.  It is especially rough lacking any central a/c as we need to be able to open our windows.

Lesson 308 – How much space does a chicken need?

It’s a matter of space – just how much room does a chicken need.

The start of something big.

This weekend, I got the following question from a reader; Brian regarding how much space you should allocate for chickens. I get this question a lot so I have included the entire email converstation here (trust me, it’s worth reading).

I know you’ve probably covered this somewhere in your blog, but I can’t find it. You’ve said that you have a 12′ x 25′ area for your 33 chickens. That’s about 9 square feet per chicken. Does that area include the henhouse or is it just the outside run? What I’m looking for is a good recommendation for the number of square feet per chicken for the inside area and the number of square feet per chicken for the outside run area. I’ve searched the internet and the numbers are all over the place from what seems to be a ridiculously small area to some that sound more like a palace. I sure would appreciate tapping your brain on this one. Thanks.

Here is my response to Brian:

Space requirements vary depending on the breed of bird you have and with whom you are speaking.

http://www.animalhouses.biz/stallions.html

If you look on this page, the red coop at the top is ours. The enclosed area is 4 x 6 with a 6×6 pen. That held about 23 birds (we have some very small birds so it wasn’t that crowded).