Exactly one non-portable chicken coop and exactly one non-portable chicken run. Probably the most common way to be raising chickens. This is, no doubt, a huge step above and beyond what the factories do. An excellent first step. And while I embrace this technique as something that can be "pretty good" I hope to impress upon you by the end of the article something I think is better.

I wish to express that we all have to start somewhere. It is better to have something like everybody else the first time and learn by it, than to shoot for perfection the first time and never be raising chickens at all! Coop and run is how I was raising chickens as a kid. It was how I did it when I was first raising chickens as an adult. I think that whenever somebody first has the thought of raising chickens, this is what they imagine.

(trying to get pictures of existing coops and runs)

This is my rendition of a typical coop and run in the city. Although it is usually the same for folks on a farm. The point of this image is the part that is brown. That designates an area where stuff doesn't grow anymore. For most coop/runs I have seen, the entire run is without vegetation.



vegetation factor: 0 to 7 - I have seen coops and runs that were too small, so every spec of vegetation was utterly gone. So the vegetation factor would be the same for a factory farm: zero. Although I have never seen it, I can imagine a chicken run loaded with plenty of variety of plants edible to chickens. But without the element of paddock shift (more on paddock shift later), the vegetation cannot do nearly as well.

bug factor: 1 to 3 - With a really small run, the chickens will wipe out all of the bugs and then they only get those bugs that happen to come through the fence. With a really big run, the same thing happens, but a bigger fence means more bugs will find their way in.

poop cleaning factor: 0 to 1 - You can make it a little easier on yourself if you can pile lots and lots of straw or sawdust in the coop. Maybe the lower layers will eventually compost and you'll have less muck to muck out (some folks do this compost trick with the idea that it will warm the coop in the winter - it works, but I have concerns about it too). Still ... some day you have to get all of that poop out of there. What an awful job. I would think that a lot of people would switch to the paddock system for this one reason alone! If the run is too small, you might have to shovel poop out of the run too.

poop hygiene factor: 0 to 4 - Most non-portable coops STINK! Yuck! Ick! Damn nasty! To me, this seems just plain wrong. The only shelter that the chicken has is a disgusting health hazard. Often, the ground is covered in poop and there are even little poop mounds under the roosts. Smaller runs are sometimes one big layer of chicken poop. Better coops and runs are often better by being much bigger and/or getting cleaned frequently. Sometimes daily. Some coop designs have a mesh bottom where most of the poop falls through to a compost pile underneath. But there is still poop on the wire mesh and there is still that awful amonia smell coming from the pile.

work factor: 1 to 6 - Generally you pack in feed and water twice a day. Some folks scoop poop every day, some folks scoop poop more like once a month. It is possible to have a watering system and bigger feeder set up to cut back on the feeding chores. And if your coop has a mesh bottom, you might be able to just throw straw or sawdust onto the poop pile once a week - but eventually that pile has to be dealt with. And you are still going to need to clean that mesh once in a while.

natural habitat factor: 2 to 6 - Even the worst coop/run combo is a big step up from factory farms. I can imagine a massive chicken run loaded with 20 trees and loads of bushes and all sorts of polyculture edible growies. Unfortunately, the chickens will eventually have an over impact on a lot of those growies and the quality will slowly degrade.

confinement factor: 1 to 6 - Granted, the worst coop/run is far, far better than a factory farm. But ... wouldn't a loose chicken be ten times better off than being in the worst coop/run? Hence the value of "1". I've never seen a run that I would give a value of higher than 3, but it is theoretically possible to have a really huge run - so I'm allowing a value of "6" on the high side.

food cost factor: 0 to 3 - Nearly all coop/run situations provide zero to near zero vegetation food for the chickens. But .... a freaky huge run loaded with excellent plants is possible. Any grains or annuals will probably be wiped out before they can get very big. But some good trees could provide a fair amount of food.

A paddock system would have a micro coop that you can drag around from paddock to paddock. Easier and cheaper to build than any of the non-portable coops I've seen. And since the micro coop is portable, there is no more mucking out the coop and the vegetation under and around the coop doesn't get wiped out.

Raising chickens in the exact same area day after day harbors diseases.

Since there is loads of chicken poop in the area and a lack of plant growth to take in the manure, the poop is headed for the groundwater supply.

The following picture is provided with permission from happyeggs.org. I think this is an excellent example of a typical chicken run that has been in use for more than a few months.



Note the pits. That's where the chickens have scratched and scratched in the same spot for months. The upside is that they make themselves some lovely dust baths - something that chickens need. Note also - no edible vegetation in the run although there is vegetation outside of the run. The fencing appears to be some pos/neg temporary electric fencing - excellent for a paddock shift system! If you go to their site and look, you will see that they have about 20 chickens and they have room to spare. These folks could take their existing fencing and make a paddock about half the size of this one on fresh vegetation; then make a new paddock like that once a week and move the chickens to the new paddock. They could probably easily have five paddocks like this. The chickens would then constantly be on edible vegetation and get far more bugs. Plus they would have less chance of getting sick being in the same place all the time and ... and ... and ... well ... I have lots more to say about this, but I'll say it all later.

This picture is of my first chicken run (as an adult) from a long time ago. You can see that there is a LOT more vegetation outside of the run. Proof that the chickens do eat this stuff. Consider - the more of this stuff they eat, the less your feed bill is.



Note how the chickens are down to the dirt under the bush. Also note how the vegetation inside of the run is less diverse than the vegetation outside the run: chickens have preferences - there were lots of "weeds" outside of the run, but only grass and the serviceberry bush inside the run. The chickens like "weeds" better than grass. The fencing in this case is 6 feet tall field fence. It keeps in about 95% of the flightiest layers.