Planning a hen house!

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Druien
Hi everyone,
I'm new here and new to chicken keeping so please be patient with me Some of you I know are members of the ex-battery forum which I have also joined!
My husband and I are hoping to give a home to some ex-battery girls and are in the process of converting an old dog kennel and concrete-based run into a hen house. The run is 14' by 6' and the house is 6' wide by 4' deep by 3 1/2' high. The run will be fully enclosed in wire, so as fox-proof as possible and the hens will be able to free-range in our garden for at least some of every day. How many hens would you recommend keeping in such a space? Also any good tips or ideas to help us build the nicest home possible for them would be greatly appreciated.
thanks so much!
Kristal xx

Mo
My ark is 3' by 3' and less than 3' high, I keep 6 in it but they have a moveable run of about 18' by 24'.
Have a look at some of the old threads, we done this one several times.

Have fun, you'll enjoy the eggs all the more when you've picked them up warm. And hens are interesting to watch. Exasperating too, mine are not supposed to free range, must go and put Jane back in!

Petheaven
How are you getting on with your hen house and run plans? I've been looking all this up as I will be new to to chicken keeping in about a weeks time! Take a look at the RSPCA web site under farmyard animals/chickens, it has some info on how much inside space to give them. I also got the Keeping Pet Chickens book-which is full of useful starter information for those of us not in the know! They say for chickens kept in a run most of the time each one should have a minimum of one square metre. So I guess this is a good guide when planning. Lots of replies on this forum talk about how to keep the chickens interested during the day so hopefully a good read back should provide some useful information-just noticed some new entries mention meal worms-If you cant bear the thought of storing and handling live ones, you can buy freeze dried ones in most shops selling wild bird food-dont know if this would be acceptable!-One popular one seems to be getting them a mirror and also some branches and large stones to hop onto and anything to add interest to their run, so its not just flat.