A lot of good ideas on the coops PP. I agree that all preppers should have a flock of chickens. Our current coop is 10×12, but the wife decided that she wants to turn it in to her garden shed. So I'm going to start building a new 12×18 coop.
Currently we have 7 hens, with another 20 on order, plus a couple roosters. A few hens will be the broody type. We had 25 layers but we've been culling out the older hens. We bought 70 meat chickens this spring. We lost 16 due to the cold and snow during May, one chick and one duck died last night.
Usually May is pretty mild around here but this year we had a lot of cold, snow and wind so we had a hard time keeping the meat chicks warm.
Our new laying chicks are due to arrive in July.
Except for our meat chickens we let the rest of the chickens and ducks free range. Otherwise we'd have to feed them year round, and then it wouldn't be cost effective to keep the layers around. The hens always (usually) go back to the coop to lay eggs.