The seven chicks are rapidly outgrowing their grapefruit box and soon it will be time to move them to the great outdoors. Our current playhouse coop design is 2 feet x 4 feet, enough for 3-4 adult hens. My expansion adds another 16 square feet for a total of 24 square feet of indoor floor space and over 72 cubic feet of space, enough to comfortably house our flock of nine.

Two weekends ago I spent the better part of a day cutting and assembling the four sides to my chicken coop expansion project.  With the four sides assembled I was able to spend this past Saturday (an absolutely perfect day) attaching the expansion to the existing coop.  Time was my enemy as I needed to have the project attached, roofed and enclosed by the end of the day so our hens could safely go to roost that evening.

I began by attaching the roof members. This was much simpler to do before the the two boxes were joined. Phyllis and I then carried the expansion to it’s new location where I worked the ground to ensure that it was level with the existing structure. I removed the front window panel from the old box and butted the new box up against it and screwed the two units together. Next I cut the plywood panel for the top of the coop box. Since this had to slide in from the top it had to be done before the roof went on. After that came the roof, a good thing because it poured rain Saturday night. I discovered that the aluminum flashing I bought for the ridge was narrower than that used on the existing coop. This is one aspect of the expansion that I’ll have to revisit once the coop is complete.

With the roof in place I attached hardware cloth around the base. The final step for the day was to install the floor of the coop. This had to be done in two pieces in order to get them through the the front opening. Before I did that, however, I had to install a couple floor joists to support the four foot span of plywood. As a final step for the day I reattached the front window panel to the new box.  Phew, 1o hours from start to finish.

Next weekend I’ll add the trim, cut out openings for the nest box hatch and add a door on the back side that leads out to the run. Phyllis is in charge of building the nest box and painting.

The baby chicks that arrived May 12th are now just about 4 weeks old and they are growing like weeds. They have a full complement of feathers and are flying all around the brood box. We have to keep a screen door on top of the box to keep them in. There is also a lot of “chest bumping” happening as they begin establishing their pecking order. My wife has been taking them out to the coop on nice days to get them used to their future digs. Being chickens they do what chickens do, which is mostly to eat, crap and dust bathe.

I began framing out the expansion to the coop this weekend and hope to complete it next weekend. It will triple the size of our current coop. After that I’ll need to build a permanent run, part of it will need to be covered. It will also need some temporary barrier to keep the older girls separated from the younger ones until they are ready to be introduced to each other. I’m still chewing on that idea.

Well it’s been a little over a week since the chicks arrived and they are all doing well. As you can see from the photos, their tail feathers and wing feathers are growing out and they are becoming more exploratory. Most of them can now fly well enough to get onto the white step stool. We’ve also been feeding them some treats such as greens from our garden and the occasional cutworm or ant. We didn’t do this with our first group of chicks but this time around we figure this is what they’d be eating in the wild or as free rangers so it can’t be bad.

It’s always an exciting day when the baby chicks arrive. They are tiny, cute and fuzzy and they scoot all around the brood box. Amazingly, unlike other birds which emerge naked and blind from their eggs, chickens arrive fully formed and self sufficient from day one.  They just need food, water and warmth.

This is the second shipment of chicks for us. The first shipment of three arrived last June and we had great success. We began getting eggs from them in December. Being neophyte chicken ranchers, however, we made the mistake of allowing our birds to free range unsupervised on our property. The inevitable occurred in April when a hawk took one of them. In an instant our egg production dropped by a third. So we decided to add to our flock. Since our town allows us to own a total of 10 we decided to go to the limit, but for some reason my wacky wife only ordered 7 so we now have a total of 9.

Having nearly a year of experience under our belts I can honestly say that chickens are one dumb animal. Chickens look at the world one way – “is it food?” And of course, for a chicken, it usually is. I’ve seen them eat plastic, styrofoam, and rocks. They even ate all the caulking from around a window as far as they could reach. As my wife says, just be glad chickens aren’t 10 feet tall because we’d all be chicken feed.

On the plus side they certainly are tame animals and very social. And they deliver fresh eggs almost daily. You can’t really dislike a creature that asks so little of you and provides a healthy and delicious bounty.

About the Setup

The box is from Costco and was used to ship grapefruits; last year we used a watermelon box. They are great because they have high sides and can be recycled once we move the chickens to the coop. The bottom of the box is covered in pine shavings which are replaced weekly. They can be purchased at any pet supply or animal feed store. The heat lamp and infrared bulb were purchased at Lowes. They are attached to microphone stand (something we had already) so that we can adjust the heat source as the chicks grow. The thermometer in the corner lets us keep an eye on the termperature. They are supposed to be kept at 90-95 degrees (f) for the first week. The temperature can be reduced by 5 degrees each week thereafter. The white thing is a folding stool, we placed it there to give them some cover and a place to hide. The red thing is a waterer. It’s important to have a waterer sized for chicks so they don’t fall in and drown. The long silver thing is a feeder that allows the chicks to put their heads through so they don’t poop in their food. In a few weeks the chicks will be capable of limited flight so we have an old screen door that we will cover the box with.

Waddle was a 9 month old buff orpington hen that fell victim to a hawk on April 5, 2009. Waddle was queen of the roost. She did all the pecking but was never pecked. This is daughter Emma’s video tribute. I believe she used every effect available in Windows Movie Maker.

Recently Kathy mentioned that she has been toying with the idea of having chickens, but she has some hesitations, so this post is for her and hopefully anyone else intrigued by the idea of a small flock of chickens in your urban or suburban backyard…  Continue reading Chickens in Your Backyard

The legendary Angie (a.k.a. “Miss Prissy” on the Backyard Chicken Forum) has asked me to blog about our chickens…I feel a little aprehensive about this because we have had our girls for only four months and I know way more about sewing than I do about chickens.  Miz P, on the other hand, lives on a working farm with about 100 chickens (and much more livestock) and she is about as self-sufficient as a family can possibly be.  This is a woman who could have crossed the Great Plains in a Conestoga wagon with a gaggle of children, a husband, extended family and livestock in tow with one hand tied behind her back.

So I’ll do the best I can with an update on our three girls.  My daughter Emma wishes they were still wee chicks, but they have grown up into lovely ladies nonetheless. 

Waddle is a Buff Orpington; she’s at the top of the pecking order.  She’s the chicken with the MBA; John calls her the “thought leader” – she is always the first to check out something new and she has always been the calmest, friendliest and the most tame.  She is very curious, self confident and always the first out of the coop in the morning.

K.J. is the Australorp, she’s #2 and is constantly challenging Waddle’s position as Top Hen.  K.J. is also the largest and heaviest; she is the first one to sound the alarm when they free range; her wariness reminds of the wild turkeys that come through our yard.  She seems to be the one who is maturing first, so we shall see if she lays first. 

Hippie Chick is an Easter Egger.  She has always been a loner who doesn’t like to be touched, but she does like company.  The only time she’ll make an exception is when I visit them right as they are falling asleep.  Then she will let me stroke her chest while she roosts.  She has muffs, a beard and lush hawk-like feathering on her head and neck and greenish-black tail feathers.

Waddle, K.J. and Hippie Chick

One thing I love about chickens is their social hierarchy, which is complex and fascinating to observe.  So far we’ve had no real problems; they get along pretty well save for the occasional mano-a-mano “You talkin’ to ME?” showdowns when they free range.  The everyday bird comedy is endlessly hilarious.  They will be four months old November 16 – and the egg countdown has begun.

We had a lot of rain this summer, so it took a while to get the final painting done on the coop.  The stones around the bottom are just an extra critter deterent in addtion to the 12 inches ofhardware cloth that extends into the run.  Emmi painted a rock that we use as a doorstop when  we open up the coop to let them free range (always supervised, we have hawks.)  They love to free rnage because they can scratch to theri hearts content.  We also picked out first watermleon this week – and it came in at 30 lbs! Somehow the five of us managed to eat it all within two days. The chicks were 8 weeks old as of yesterday, and the three of them are losing their cheepy chick voices and acquiring their hen voices.

Emma & Waddle

Our potager-style vegetable garden is coming into it’s own.  Summer of 2008 has been just about a perfect garden year – the weather has been beautiful,  warm but not humid and we’ve had plenty of rain.  Of course, with garden there are always high and lows, oftenat the same time.  The lone tomatillo I planted hasn’t had any fruit, and some of the tomatoes are showing signs of blosson end rot.  But then again, the watemelon is amazing, and we even have decroative white mini pumpkins growing that I never even seeded!  We bought a bag as Thanskgiving decoration at Costco and threw them onto the front bed to compost.  Well, of course over a dozen of them sprouted!  So I kep the biggest one going, and you can see it in the same bed as the watermelon vines.  We have more veggies than we can even eat!

The chicken coop is finally finshed and we have our permit from Westwood. The coop design is the well known Playhouse Coop.  It’s just the right size for 3-4 chickens.  We have three, 1 Buff Orpington, 1 Autralorp, and 1 Easter Egger.  The first will lay lay brown eggs, and the Easter Egger lays a blue or green egg.  They’re 4 weeks old this week, and still a few months away from laying.

One nice surprise this year are the watermeloms; they’re growing on the front steps.  That’s by far the warmest spot around our house due to the south facing windows and the hard surfaces.  The watermelons seem pretty happy there. The vines are just growing all over the place and osme of them are  more than 15 feet long.  Next year we will have to crop rotate, so we might actually goew these in the front yard under some ornamental grasses that get pretty tall. Or we might put them were you see the tomatoes, and plant giant sunflowers behind them as a livng screen because the tomatoes will need to go into a different bed as well.