How this site works
PlanMyChickens is two things: a calculator that turns a flock size into coop and run square footage, and profiles of 28 backyard breeds. It exists for the week before you build a coop or place a chick order, when every answer you find is either a forum thread from 2011 or a hatchery page selling you something.
Where the calculator numbers come from
Four square feet of coop and ten square feet of run per bird, and one nest box per four hens, are the standard minimums published by cooperative extension services and repeated in most keeper guides. They assume standard-size birds that get outside every day. Bantams need less. Heavy, feather-footed breeds and flocks shut in through a long winter need more — when in doubt, build bigger, because crowding shows up as feather picking long before it shows up as anything else.
The egg estimate is deliberately blunt: a flat 250 eggs per hen per year. That is close to right for a healthy production hen in her first two laying years and much too generous for an ornamental breed or an older bird. If you are sizing a real flock around egg output, use the per-breed numbers in the breed guide instead of the homepage figure.
Where the breed data comes from
Egg counts, shell colors, sizes, temperaments, and cold hardiness come from breed standards, hatchery catalogs, and heritage-breed conservation listings. Hatchery figures describe a well-fed bird from a good line in her first laying year, so every egg number here is a typical range rather than a promise — daylight, molt, feed, and age all move it.
The strengths and trade-offs on each breed page are summarized from what keepers report in public discussion, not from birds we raised. There is no test flock behind this site and we are not going to pretend there is. When the same complaint keeps surfacing — Polish crests blocking their vision and getting them picked on, ISA Browns burning out after two hard laying years — it goes in the trade-offs.
Breed photos come from hatchery catalogs and public breed photo archives, and each one gets checked against the breed's standard markings before it goes in. Mislabeled chicken photos are everywhere online: one image widely captioned as a Sapphire Gem turned out to be a Barred Rock, which is why a couple of breeds are still missing from the guide.
What this site does not do
Nothing here is sponsored, no hatchery pays to be mentioned, and there is no ranking to buy your way up. It is also not veterinary advice — a bird that is sick needs a vet, not a web page. Check your local ordinance before you build, too: flock caps, rooster bans, and setback rules vary street by street.
Keeping it current
The breed guide was last updated July 2026. Breeds get added as we find a correctly identified photo and enough consistent keeper reporting to write an honest profile; a few popular ones are queued precisely because that photo does not exist yet. If a number here looks wrong, it is a data bug rather than a sales pitch.