Stage 0 — deciding and planning
Everyone worries about the feed. The published figures say feed is the easy half: a bird can go weeks without it and only days without water, and water is also the thing that runs out, freezes and gets fouled while you are away.
By Scooter M.·Published October 18, 2026
The short answer
Two to three days is comfortable with ordinary equipment. A week needs planning. Beyond that you need a person, not more gear. The limit is water, not feed — Mississippi State Extension publishes that “A bird can survive for weeks without feed but only for a few days if water is not available.” And birds drink roughly twice the weight of feed they eat, rising to three or four times that in extreme heat, so water is the thing that runs out first.
All three come from the same Mississippi State Extension publication on water quality and quantity, and together they turn “will they be all right?” into arithmetic.
| Figure | What it says | Why it matters when you are away |
|---|---|---|
| Survival | "A bird can survive for weeks without feed but only for a few days if water is not available" | Water is the constraint. Plan the water first and the feed second |
| Water to feed ratio | "Water intake in your birds is roughly twice the weight of feed intake" | Lets you compute water demand from a feed figure you already know |
| Heat | "during periods of extreme heat stress, water intake may triple or even quadruple" | A reservoir sized for mild weather can empty in two days in a heatwave |
| Feed intake | 1/4 to 1/3 lb per hen per day | The input for both calculations |
Volume is only the first requirement. A full container that fouls, freezes or tips over on day two has not solved anything, and all three failures happen specifically because nobody is there.
A large reservoir behind closed drinking points answers the first and third of those together, which is why the pipeline system is the first pick rather than a bigger fount.
Feed capacity is genuinely straightforward — at a third of a pound per hen per day, a 40 lb hopper covers six hens for nearly three weeks. The caveat is not capacity, it is who else is eating.
An open feeder left full for a week is a standing invitation. The rats page makes the point that a rodent problem is a feed problem, and an unattended week is exactly how a feed problem becomes a rodent population. A treadle feeder closes between visits, which is its real argument here — the treadle feeder roundup covers the mechanism and the training period, and the Grandpa’s review checks one maker’s capacity claim against the published intake figures.
Feed and water scale with capacity: buy a bigger container and you have bought more days. Dawn and dusk do not scale. They happen on a schedule, and a coop that stays shut at dawn is a coop full of birds with no access to the run, while a coop that stays open at dusk is an open invitation all night.
This is the one task where an automatic door is doing something no amount of capacity can do, and it is the reason it sits on this page alongside two containers. The door roundup ranks them on published specifications, and the head-to-head covers the differences that matter.
| Away for | What it needs | What to check before you go |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 nights | Nothing special. Fill everything, shut the coop securely | That the fill is genuinely full, and that the run is secure without you walking it |
| 3 to 4 days | Two waterers in different places, a feeder with real capacity, an automatic door | Nest boxes - eggs will accumulate, and accumulated eggs get broken and then eaten |
| A week | All of the above, sized by the arithmetic above, plus somebody checking once mid-week | The weather forecast, specifically the high. Heat changes the water figure by 3 to 4 times |
| More than a week | A person, visiting. This is not a gear problem any more | That they know what normal looks like, so they can tell you when it is not |
The egg point in the middle row is worth drawing out because it is the one people do not anticipate. Eggs left in the nest for days get stepped on, and a broken egg in a nest is the published starting point for egg eating — which is very hard to stop once it starts. If you are away more than about three days in lay, somebody collecting is doing more than a favor. Roll-out nest boxes are the hardware answer, since the egg leaves the nest the moment it is laid.
A neighbor who has never kept chickens can do this competently with a short list, and most of the risk is in what they do not know to look at.
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Water capacity first because it is the binding constraint, then feed capacity, then the door - which is the one job nobody can do remotely and the one a person has to come for otherwise.
Generic
5 gal, 16 drinking points
Best for: Days away rather than hours
Five gallons behind sixteen closed drinking points, which is the only shape of waterer that answers the question this page is about — capacity the birds cannot foul and you do not have to be present to refill.
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Grandpa's Feeders
40 lb, 12 birds for 10 days
Best for: A dozen birds, or a week away
Double the capacity of the standard feeder for the same mechanism and the same 24-month guarantee — the version to buy if you ever want to leave the flock for a week.
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Run-Chicken
8 x 10 in opening
Best for: An aluminum door on two AA batteries
An aluminum, powder-coated door that runs a published year on two AA cells and reverses itself when it meets resistance — the whole unit, not an opener bolted to a door you supply.
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Harris Farms
3 chickens per nipple
Best for: Water that stays clean by design
Four nipples and a bucket you already own, which is the cheapest way to end the open-water problem for good and is rated by the maker at three chickens per nipple.
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Two to three days is comfortable with ordinary equipment, a week is possible with planning and a mid-week check, and beyond that you need somebody visiting. The binding constraint is water rather than feed: Mississippi State Extension publishes that a bird can survive for weeks without feed but only a few days if water is not available.
Mississippi State Extension publishes that a bird can survive only a few days if water is not available, against weeks without feed. That is a survival figure rather than a target - condition and laying suffer long before it, and a hen that cannot drink for a day typically stops laying. Treat it as the outer wall of a margin, not a budget.
Weeks, on the published figure, and that is not the number to plan around. Mississippi State Extension's point in publishing it is the contrast with water, which runs out in days. In practice feed capacity is the easy half of leaving a flock: at a third of a pound per hen per day, a 40 lb feeder covers six hens for nearly three weeks.
Roughly twice the weight of what they eat, which is the ratio Mississippi State Extension publishes. At a feed intake of a quarter to a third of a pound per hen per day, that is about half to two-thirds of a pound of water per hen daily, or about 3.4 gallons for six hens over a week. In extreme heat the same source says intake may triple or even quadruple.
Yes, with the water sized properly and somebody looking in once mid-week. Six hens need about 14 lb of feed and 4.5 gal of water for seven mild days, with more capacity than that for margin. Two waterers in separate places rather than one large one, a feeder that closes, an automatic coop door, and a check on the forecast - heat multiplies the water requirement by three or four.
One with real reservoir capacity behind closed drinking points, rather than a bigger open fount. An open container fouls with bedding and droppings within a day, which is the problem nobody is there to fix. A five-gallon system feeding cups or nipples covers six hens for well over a week in mild weather and cannot be fouled from above.
They accumulate, get stepped on, and that is a problem. A broken egg in a nest is the published starting point for egg eating, which is difficult to stop once a hen has learned it. Past about three days in lay, somebody collecting is doing more than a favor - or fit roll-out nest boxes, which take the egg out of the nest the moment it is laid.
It is the one job that cannot be solved with capacity. Feed and water scale - buy a bigger container and you have bought more days. Dawn and dusk happen on a schedule regardless, and a coop left open overnight is the highest-consequence failure on the list. If a trip means somebody driving over twice a day purely to open and close a door, the door pays for itself quickly.
Every figure cited on this page came from one of these documents. If one of them has changed since we read it, the number here is out of date and we would like to know.
The whole first-flock list, staged by when you actually need each thing rather than sorted by category.
Closed nipple systems against open drinkers, with the published birds-per-nipple rating and how to switch a flock over.
Treadle feeders on published capacity, materials and training period — and the light-breed edge case the makers admit to.
Three automatic doors compared on published cold ratings, battery life, IP rating and opening size.
What the no-power tricks actually buy you, and the honest answer about what works through a hard freeze.
Grandpa's treadle feeder reviewed on published figures: the 6-hens-for-10-days claim checked against extension feed intake, and the 500 g vs 900 g treadle weight that decides the size.
The published order is shade, water, ventilation. What to buy for each, the signs of heat stress in severity order, and the CFM arithmetic that rules a fan out of most coops.
What the bloom is, why washing commits an egg to the refrigerator, and how to handle a dirty one.