Animal Welfare Professionals

The TLDR of this post: I'm wondering how other shelters calculate their daily shelter capacity as I feel our current system does not accurately portray our open kennel space for incoming animals.

One of my duties is to calculate our kennel capacity to send out to various departments so it is known how many animals we have and what open space we have for incoming animals. I did not create the system for calculating this and something that has always bothered me is that open stray kennels and open adopt kennels carry the same weight capacity wise, and while I understand that part of the reasoning for this is that we technically could move unavailable animals into those spaces if we need to. However, if we are having to move animals into adoption early because we are running out of space in the back, that signifies to me that we are at pretty critical capacity and it is difficult to accurately communicate that information to other departments because we may have 30 open kennels in adoption and only 5 in our stray areas so it looks like our percentage of available kennels for incoming animals is much lower than it actually is. Something our capacity calculations also doesn't consider is the number of animals in our kennel cough/URI isolation kennels. While we do include them in our email, they have no impact on the actual calculations. I think it would make more sense to have some sort of report that shows how many animals are cleared from isolation and would need to moved into our general population. I feel that most people don't look at the actual break down of space that we provide and just look at the capacity percentage. It also would be beneficial in my mind to have a separate capacity for our isolation areas so we can more easily identify when we have a concerningly high number of animals with kennel cough or URI.

#AdmissionsandIntake(includingIntake-to-placement)
#DataandTechnology
#OrganizationalManagement

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Laurel Wilton
Feline Welfare Supervisor
Nebraska Humane Society
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As I'm sure you're aware, Capacity for Care is about far more than just "open kennels". If you're looking for evidence-based capacity calculators, make sure to check out UC Davis' C4C calculators and spreadsheets!

https://www.sheltermedicine.com/library/resources/shelter-capacity-calculators

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Rachel Powell DVM
ASV Board of Directors
Director of Surgery
Greenhill Humane Society
Eugene, OR
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Oh yes I am very aware and it is something we talk about and consider often at our shelter. It is actually part of why I want to update our calculations for open kennel space because the way our current system works I feel is not actually congruent to our capacity for care, which I sort of explained in my original post. I want to update it so that other departments that aren't directly working with the animals every day have a much better understanding of the number of animals our staff are taking care of as the animals back of house take significantly more effort and time to clean and care for than the ones in adoption areas due to how rooms and kennels are set up.

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Laurel Wilton
Feline Welfare Supervisor
Nebraska Humane Society
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-13-2026 08:37 AM
From: Rachel Powell
Subject: How Does Your Shelter Calculate Kennel Capacity

As I'm sure you're aware, Capacity for Care is about far more than just "open kennels". If you're looking for evidence-based capacity calculators, make sure to check out UC Davis' C4C calculators and spreadsheets!

https://www.sheltermedicine.com/library/resources/shelter-capacity-calculators

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Rachel Powell DVM
ASV Board of Directors
Director of Surgery
Greenhill Humane Society
Eugene, OR
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Hi Laurel,

I was the ED at Cat Adoption Team for 12 years - until about a year ago - and can tell you what we did there. We had different ways we looked at capacity: types of cats, and types of housing. 

We knew the actual number of kennels we had in each housing area and our average number of active foster homes.  But gross housing capacity isn't particularly useful, like you said. What we needed to know was housing units by housing area or type: adult, kitten, URI, ringworm, admissions, etc. And the capacity that was typically in the greatest demand was rooms and offices onsite (we used offices as alternative housing), and fosters who could care for sick, neonatal, or socialization cats/kittens. 

We also tracked capacity for certain groups/types of cats. This helped keep cats moving through our system: we essentially applied the adoption-driven capacity model to groups of cats: seniors, behavior issues, history of inappropriate elimination, special diet, FeLV, etc. 

For some of those types of cats, we could predict what type of housing they would need: seniors, behavior cats, and FeLV for example, were nearly always going to need either a room, office, or foster home with that type of skill. So even if we only had two seniors in-house, we wouldn't take another one until we had the housing open up.

Making all this work required close coordination between teams: admissions, behavior, hospital, shelter, foster. They had a google group and a weekly meeting. 

And of course, whatever you plan for, animals tend to move between categories. There are always surprises! But we found if we planned well, we could usually manage the surprises without too much drama.

For reference, we had 2,500-3,500 cats coming through a year with 800-1,000 of those spending time in foster.

Let me know if you have questions. I'd be happy to chat offline if that would help. 

Karen 

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Karen Green, CAWA
Ask Karen Green
http://askkarengreen.com
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Hi Laurel - Last year, our Veterinary Operations Director developed a system for us to monitor our capacity for care. All of our cats get flagged as C4C levels 1, 2, or 3 depending on the conditions they have and whether they've completed an intake exam. 1 is less time, 3 is more time. Our cats also get flagged separately if they have other conditions (i.e. chronic conditions, urinary concerns, behavior concerns, dental disease, etc.)  I've attached the spreadsheet we use. There are a few different numbers we look at:

• C4C levels 1, 2, & 3 and how many staff hours are needed for each per day.
• Number of cats with specific conditions and a max number of cats we like to have for each condition.
• Number of available spay/neuter surgery slots we have in the coming weeks.

This is updated weekly and discussed at our intake meetings. It's been really helpful for us to collect data and understand when there's a hard "no" for certain types of cats because we are at or over capacity. 

Not encompassed separately in this spreadsheet is our available kennels and rooms but it is discussed at the same time. We often run short on individual rooms and foster homes for cats that need them. This is somewhat reflected in the max number of cats for conditions such as being a senior or having behavior concerns. 

I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

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Sara Post
Program Operations Director
Feline Rescue
Saint Paul, MN
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