Editorial policy

Who writes this site

Scooter M. writes everything here, as an enthusiast rather than a credentialed expert. There is no veterinarian on staff, no poultry scientist, and no test facility. Where a housing decision touches on animal health we cite published extension guidance and link to it rather than offering an opinion of our own.

What decides a ranking

Measured floor area against the maker’s own bird-count claim, computed identically for every coop by the method on the methodology page. After that: material and what it means for lifespan, what a coop includes or omits, and how far it is from being securable. Nothing in that list is a commission rate.

What we refuse to publish

• Fabricated reviews or testimonials. There are none on this site. We have no customers to quote and we will not invent any.
• Ratings and review counts. None anywhere, in the copy or the structured data. We have not handled these coops, so a score from us would be an opinion presented as a measurement.
• Testing claims. We have not tested a single coop and we say so on every page that recommends one.
• Estimated measurements. Where a manufacturer publishes nothing usable, our tables say “not published.” The calculation module is written so that it cannot emit a guess.
• Prices typed into a page. Every price is pulled from the live retailer listing. If the last check is more than 48 hours old the price disappears and the button reads “check price.”
• Credentials nobody here holds, and any implication of experience we do not have.

Every recommendation names who it is wrong for

Every coop and every product on this site carries a “skip this if” line, and some of them are blunt. A pick with no downside is an advertisement. If we cannot articulate the buyer a product is wrong for, we do not understand it well enough to recommend it.

Affiliate commission and how it is kept out

Coop & Clutch earns commission on qualifying purchases through the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Three things follow from that, and we treat all three as commitments:

1. Commission never influences a ranking. The measured floor area is computed before anything else and it does not know what a product pays.
2. We link to coops we recommend against as readily as coops we recommend, because a comparison that only links its winners is not a comparison.
3. Every commercial link is marked, and every page carrying one discloses it above the recommendation rather than in a footer. See the affiliate disclosure.

Sources

Husbandry guidance comes from land-grant university extension services first, then USDA, then manufacturer specification sheets for product facts. Forums and owner communities are cited only as evidence of what owners report, never as husbandry authority. Every source is linked so you can read it rather than take our summary of it.

Updates and dates

Every page shows when it was last reviewed. A revision means someone re-checked the figures against the current listings, not that a word was changed. The sitemap and the feed both carry the real content dates rather than the date the site was last deployed.

Corrections

We correct errors and we do not quietly delete them. Manufacturers revise published dimensions, and a figure that was right when recorded can stop being right. If a number here does not match the listing in front of you, send us the link. Contact us.

What we do not cover

Feed rations, breed selection, hatching and incubation, and anything veterinary. This is a housing site. Your state extension service and a poultry-experienced veterinarian are better placed on all four, and pretending otherwise would be exactly the overreach this policy exists to prevent.