Coop Ventilation: Here's Exactly How Much Your Chickens Need

Winter ventilation for the 10’x10’ coop

How much ventilation does this end up being? Well, in the winter, I close the windows and I close one of the gable vents. Yes, the second gable vent is totally unneeded in the winter months. In fact, the coop feels a bit drafty with it open, despite the fact it’s well above the chickens’ heads.

So, my winter ventilation ends up being 5.94 square feet total—the size of the pop hole door plus the size of one gable vent.

That’s only 0.24 square feet/chicken.

And, honestly, I think the coop would be fine with less. There’s plenty of airflow. The coop is dry, and there are absolutely no odors—aside from first thing in the morning when there’s a whole night’s worth of fresh poop on the droppings boards from 25 chickens. But as soon as I scrape that off, the coop is fresh.

I think had I just installed two 1-square-foot louvre vents on opposite walls, that would have been enough—and that works out to just 0.13 square feet/chicken.

So, when you see the ventilation estimate everywhere that you need at least 1 square foot of ventilation per chicken (and that doesn’t even include the pop door!), it’s totally bogus—or, at least it is during the winter in a coop with good management.

And by good management, I mean your coop has no less than ~3-4 square feet/chicken and you remove poop frequently—either by scooping it out of the sand or by replacing your organic bedding.

And what about the estimate of 1 square foot of ventilation for every 10 square feet of floor space? Also bogus. In the case of this coop, I have only 0.59 square ft of ventilation for every 10 square feet of floor space.

Summer ventilation for the 10’x10’ coop

And what about in the summer? Well, for summer ventilation, I open both gable vents, both windows, and the pop door. This amounts to 14 square feet of total ventilation or 0.56 square feet/chicken.

However, I do wish I had more ventilation in the summer months, just because the coop does get warmer than I like, sitting out in the sun like that. So, I do add a DeWalt battery-powered fanto the coop in the summer.

Additionally, the nights do cool down quite a bit here. If they didn’t, I’d add even more fans.

And if I needed to, I could leave the human door open for this large coop if I added a securely latched screen door covered with hardware cloth to keep predators out at night. This would add another 19.11 square feet of ventilation, for a total of 1.3 square feet per chicken.

Ventilation for a 4’x4’ elevated coop with 4 chickens

Below, you can see a photo of my 4’x4’ elevated chicken coop.