a home for "the girls"

Our getting chickens has been a process about 2 years in the making. Most of it involved talking, debating, reading, learning, and vacillating. Should we? Should we not? We want the eggs; do we want the work? In March, talking became a decision and in early April became an online order through a friend with a well-reputed hatchery.

In mid-April our ten baby chicks arrived. We had no coop and no prospects of getting one built any time soon-- I think there may have still been snow on the ground-- but that was okay because they were small and needed to be indoors since it was so cold anyway. We brought them home and set them up in a tupperware bin with a lid that had been retrofitted for them by cutting out the center of the lid and replacing the solid plastic with chicken wire attached with zip ties.

They won our hearts in no time.

 the chicks' home for the first 4 weeks of life

the husband's clever solution for ventilation and heat without risk of escape

 

 

But the chicks grew. And fast. Ohmy. So so so fast.

 

Daniel got to work on a permanent home for them, but only as he had time. He grabbed a few hours here and a few there. We promised to one another that we would not be driven to sleeplessness and exhaustion by this project. I did my best, but by the end of a month they had grown so much and had gotten so smelly and were escaping so quickly every time we lifted the lid to fill their feed and water that I started to feel my insides crawl and I began wondering why we had gotten them in the first place.

Good thing my husband just kept plodding on, generously re-doing certain parts of the project because I didn't like the way the coop was looking and generally ignoring the contradictory urgency I was expressing to get the chicks out of my kitchen.

(I must have sounded rather obnoxious: "Can you tear that roof you just spent three hours building off and build it this way instead?" pause "OHMYGOODNESSHONEY! INEEDITFINISHEDYESTERDAY!")

the coop, mid-way

The chicks moved out about one month exactly after we got them. My kitchen smelled like normal within half a day. I apologized for being such a terror that last week. Daniel forgave me. Especially after I'd ooh'd and ahh'd sufficiently over just how wonderful a coop he had built.

moving day!

 

 

At this point we still didn't have the outdoor fencing up, but some wisdom from experienced chicken farmers told us that we wanted to keep the chickens in their home for a handful of weeks to establish it as "home base" for them anyway. They lived happily in there for another 4 weeks until Daniel, along with the help of a young guy from the church who we hired for the day, put in the cedar posts and 6' high (with 1/2' of it buried) welded wire for their outdoor space.

One morning and an hour the next day to build the fence gate later, the chickens' home was entirely done.

I have to say, aside from the work of building the coop, they're the easiest pets ever. Daniel says building the coop is a lot cleaner and easier than training a puppy. I am not a pet person so I was a bit apprehensive-- especially after the whole stink-up-my-kitchen thing-- but I'm telling you: everyone should have chickens. And take it from me: don't cry about the smell in the kitchen; it becomes a distant memory in no time.

 

 

Now for your online tour (those of you who aren't interested in chickens, well, I was going to say you can stop reading now, but chances are you stopped reading sooner than this):

The coop is 6x8 feet with windows on three sides. We used a paint-like stain that withstands the elements better than regular exterior paint on the walls and decided to match the color of the trim on our house. The door is an old [small] door that we took out of the house when we remodeled the upstairs; eventually I'd like it to be red like the exterior doors on our house (it's currently just the color it was when it was inside), but that requires me actually going to the store and buying the right paint since I don't have any extra right now.

 

Immediately to the right of the door are the nesting boxes. We have four of them. That's more than enough for our nine birds ("Wait," you say, "I thought you had ten?" Well... that's a story for another day) and should actually allow us to get seven more chickens if we'd like.

 

 

To the far left is the roost and then the hanging feeder and waterer. You can also see a little bit of the pop door that allows the chickens to come in and out of the coop as they will. On the floor is a mixture of pine shavings and grass clippings. We'd also like to add dry leaves in the fall since we're going with the deep litter method (Daniel built the coop accordingly). The walls near the nesting boxes are partly insulated and covered with horizontal wood planking that Daniel salvaged from some of our remodeling projects; he plans to do the same around the rest of the coop sometime before the snow flies.

 This is the chickens' pop door that lets them out each morning and then secures them inside each night. Just as the experts told us, the chickens know the coop is theirs and they always return to it shortly before sunset on their own (it really is funny how routine they are!). Just after 8:30pm in the evening, one of us goes out and shuts the pop door; in the morning, we open it and they come flying (almost literally-- we need to clip their wings) out, excited to peck and dig and do their chicken thing.

Since we're not letting the chickens have absolute freedom in our yard (we want the yard for the kids and we don't trust the chickens with the road or stray dogs with the chickens), Daniel made their outdoor space pretty big: 25x25'. We took advantage of some sloped property we hadn't even been mowing so we've not cut into "our" space at all.

 

 

We really are loving having them. The kids' favorite thing is bringing them the scraps of whatever we've eaten that's left on plates. They're always "visiting" the chickens and picking clover to throw over the fence for them.

 

 

And we aren't even getting eggs yet!

We anticipate that will begin sometime in September. Most chickens take 4-6 months to start producing, so we could be surprised by some as soon mid-August, but that's not entirely likely.

In the meantime, they're our "girls" and we love them.