About CoopSize

Hi, I'm James

I grew up on a family farm in central Illinois. Chickens were part of daily life — collecting eggs before school, repairing the coop after every windstorm, learning which breeds laid through winter and which gave up at the first frost. By the time I left for college I'd helped raise dozens of flocks across nearly every common backyard breed.

Then I left for college, became a software engineer, and moved to a place with no room for chickens. But I kept watching the chicken-keeping world from a distance, and over the last few years I noticed something happening: people in the suburbs and even denser cities started keeping backyard flocks. Cities loosened ordinances. Hatcheries reported record chick orders. Hardware stores started stocking nipple waterers and dust-bath powder right next to the garden hoses.

The problem is that most of those new keepers had never grown up around chickens. They were starting from zero — Googling things at midnight, reading conflicting forum advice, buying prefab coops labeled "for 4–6 birds" that were actually overcrowded with three. So I built CoopSize.

What this site is

CoopSize is a calculator first. You enter your flock and your situation, and it tells you exactly how much coop space, run space, ventilation, roost length, nesting boxes, feed, and water you need. The live 3D preview is there because dimensions on a page don't help anyone visualize what 24 square feet actually looks like — but a rotating 3D model of that coop next to your run? That clicks.

It's also an information site. The breed pages, housing-method guides, and FAQ are written from real experience. Every recommendation is something I'd actually tell a friend to buy or build. I link to commercial products on Amazon when they're genuinely the right answer (Grandpa's Feeders, the Run-Chicken auto door, Farm Innovators heated bases) — not because every page needs to monetize.

Why a calculator and not just another blog

I run a separate tool, satellitearea.com, that lets people draw a shape on a satellite map and instantly get the square footage and acreage. Gardeners, landscapers, and small farmers use it to figure out areas before they buy mulch, gravel, sod, or seed. It gets thousands of visitors a month because it solves a specific problem in thirty seconds and doesn't waste anyone's time. (It also pairs well with this site — if you're trying to figure out where in your yard the run will fit, it's a fast way to measure the available area.)

Coop sizing is the same kind of problem. Most existing "calculators" are buried at the bottom of a 3,000-word blog post that multiplies your flock count by 4 and calls it done. They don't account for breed (a Jersey Giant needs more than twice the space of a Silkie). They don't account for climate (cold-climate flocks need bigger coops because they're inside more in winter). They don't generate a parts list. They don't show you what the result looks like.

CoopSize does all of those things, instantly, for free, and without an email signup popup.

Breeds I grew up with

Some of these were our regulars; some were one-summer experiments my younger sister insisted on. All of them taught me something I'd later put on this site.

What I won't do on this site

• ✗ Recommend cheap prefab coops that fall apart in one winter
• ✗ Run pop-up email signups, exit-intent overlays, or autoplay videos
• ✗ Slow the page down with a dozen tracking scripts
• ✗ Pretend to be a 200-person team. It's just me.

How to reach me

If something on the site is wrong, a breed is missing, or you've found a clever housing setup that other readers should see — let me know. I read everything.

Best way: open the contact form, or send me a message via the link in the footer.