Whether you’re a new chicken owner looking for a suitable space to raise your chickens, or you’re looking for temporary housing for your existing flock – raising your chooks in the garage certainly sounds doable.
But, an important task any aspiring chicken owner should task themselves with when it comes to housing their chickens is ensuring the space is suitable.
So where do garage chicken coops fit into the mix?
Well, whether it’s for a temporary basis or a permanent solution, here’s whether you can keep chickens in the garage and what is critical when it comes to housing your chickens, indoors or out.
Contents
What Are The Ideal Housing Conditions For Chickens?
Before looking at whether it’s suitable to raise or keep your chickens in the garage, let’s do a quick review of the most important housing conditions for chickens – both for their health and their well-being.
Regardless of whether you are raising chickens for their eggs, meat, or companionship, you should always ensure your chickens have exposure to sunlight, enough space in their coop, and a clean, safe and suitable environment.
Once you know the fundamentals, you can decide for yourself if your planned housing for your chickens meets all the essential criteria.
Here’s what I mean
Direct Sunlight/Exposure To Light
You see, sunlight is the key to life on our planet as we know it. Chickens included.
Not only is sunlight the sole source of natural vitamin D for chickens, but sunlight plays a vital role in a hen’s laying cycle as well as in regulating a chicken’s sleep cycle.
All in all, sunlight, whether it’s direct or indirect light, is simply essential for a chicken’s health and wellbeing.
This is one concern about housing your chickens in the garage, as garages don’t usually have windows or easy access to natural light, let enough a door to let chickens out when they please!
Enough Space For Your Chickens
Sure, it’s true chickens don’t need acres and acres of free land to roam on 24/7. But, providing a large enough chicken coop for your flock, as well as enough space in the run, pen, or outdoors is critical for their health and well-being.
Generally speaking, you should allow 4 square feet of space in the chicken coop per chicken, and 10-15 square feet per chicken of the chicken run, pen, or outdoor space.
Inadequate space for your chickens can lead to increased aggression, decreased egg production, hygiene issues, and some pretty unhappy chooks!
Garages usually aren’t huge, But, they would generally be big enough to house small flocks or while raising or brooding baby chicks.
A Suitable Clean & Safe Space
Of course, it almost goes without saying. But, chickens need a safe, well-insulated, and clean space for them to feel comfortable and at home.
Safe and secure so your chickens are protected from predators.
Well-insulated to help keep your chooks warm in winter.
Clean and dry to avoid any unwanted bacterial build-up or ammonia (from chicken droppings).
If you’re housing chickens indoors or in the garage, you could even try potty training your chickens. Although it can take some persistence and determination, it can make things so much easier when it comes to clean-up and keeping their coop fresh.
Can You Keep Chickens in the Garage?
So, recalling that a thriving chicken needs access to sunlight, enough space in and outside the coop, and a clean and secure coop, we can now consider whether a garage is actually suitable on a permanent basis.
The short answer is that most garages simply don’t make a suitable space to raise your chickens in.
If you are looking to make a garage chicken coop, you’ll need to do a bit of a thorough investigation and maybe even some minor renovations or maintenance to be sure it’s a suitable home.
First of all, you don’t want to be using your garage to park your car in if you’re housing chickens in it. Even if the coop is shut in the garage, the constant noise of the opening and closing garage and the car will startle and stress your chickens out. Plus, the fumes from the vehicle can’t be healthy either.
Secondly, you’ll want to ensure your chickens can easily access the outdoors. If you lock your chickens up or only let them roam around the garage they won’t get enough light and be able to forage for food, among many other natural chicken behaviors. This is essential for their health and well-being in so many ways.
I could go on here, but the key is chickens need access to the outdoors where they can get light, forage, dust bath, and get some exercise!
Of course, each garage has its own dimensions and characteristics, so you can use this information to guide your own instinct as to whether it’s safe and healthy to keep chickens in your garage for any extended period of time.
One thing’s for sure, it’s never a good idea to keep chickens in a closed-off garage permanently.
However, there are times you may want to keep your chickens in the garage temporarily, like if you’re setting off fireworks around your coop, or you’re separating any aggressive chickens, if they begin vent pecking, for example.
Can You Raise Baby Chicks In The Garage?
Setting up a brooder in a garage to raise your baby chicks is entirely different from raising full-grown chickens in a garage!
Where most garages won’t make a suitable space to raise chickens in, when it comes to brooding baby chicks, a garage can work just fine!
Of course, you still want to be sure you can regulate the temperature of the garage, it has a reliable power supply for a heat lamp, and you’re not driving cars in and out which can easily disturb baby chicks.
Nonetheless, if you ensure all the conditions are accounted for when it comes to brooding baby chicks indoors, the garage is certainly suitable.
To Conclude
Whether it’s in your backyard or on a farm, chickens thrive when they have access to the outdoors.
They don’t need anything fancy, just some grass or pastures for foraging, some dirt or sand for dust bathing, and a nice secure chicken coop where they can call home.
In a traditional sense, a garage doesn’t exactly sound like the ideal place to raise chickens.
For this reason, it’s not recommended to raise your chickens in a garage, unless you’ve done some thorough checks to be sure chickens have access to everything need to thrive!
If you’ve set up your garage chicken coop with all the essentials I’d love to see it! Post it to our Facebook page or send us a message and I can share it here for everybody to see :).
Happy farming!