Wow, no one is talking about the smell. Have you got any idea how terrible is the smell of a chicken coop? You do know that you have to get in there to clean it, right? This ain’t no fun activity. I prefer to get fewer eggs per month than to clean it myself (sometimes every day, it also depends on the weather too).

I just let my chicken run about on the whole estate. She only goes back to the coop at dark. It hardly smells any different to the rest of the yard

I imagine this scales with size.

By comparison, if you own a dog, you have to clean that too. And pick up it's excrement every day.