A backyard chicken

Ok I can already hear you now. I can't keep a chicken in my backyard! Its not big enough. Or its going to take too much time, or too much money to keep chickens. None of that is true. There is nothing better than walking out into your backyard and finding the daily egg. Knowing exactly what your chicken has been eating and how it has been treated. Knowing that its not housed in a 2ft X 2ft box, unable to walk. Just to sit there, feed, and produce eggs. Terrible conditions. I had wanted to get a few for a while. I just had to convince the boss it was a good idea. Luckily, baby chickens are really really cute.

I visit a feed store every now and then for some bones for my dogs or to pick up some seeds or plants for my garden and have always noticed the little chicks in the back corner. Up until last year I thought the same thing you were thinking before. There was no way I could do it. So I started doing research, beginning with any city ordinances. I seemed to be all clear there so I moved on to my HOA rules, which is where I hit the brick wall. According to the rules I was not allowed to keep any type of fowl on the property.

Well I've never been one to abide by all the rules put in front of me, so with my wife in tow we went up to the local feed store and picked up our first pair of Buff Orpingtons. After arriving home with our new fluffy friends I realized something. I had no idea where I was going to keep them, or what they really needed to thrive and survive, not a good plan. Of course I picked up a bag of chick food and a waterer, but that was the extent of my knowledge. So I began to do some research. After a quick internet search, we found a nice big tote for the chicks to stay in and got some bedding, food, and water all in place.

That worked for about 2 weeks. At which point the chicks had decided it was time to start practicing their jumping and flapping. Soon the chicks had become quite the escape artists. It was time to start building a coop for their permanent move to the outdoors. My first coop was a combination of a few designs I had found in some chicken coop books from places like Home Depot, Tractor Supply, Lowes. They all have do it yourself coop design books. Books along the lines like, this or this. There as many plans for coops as there are for houses you actually live in. So I took my best shot at combining a few that I though looked practical and easy to build. So building what looked like a dog house raised up for floods and the painting skills of a few children we had ourselves a coop.

It was around this time one of the chicks didn't make it. After searching some of her symptoms I'm pretty sure she had succumbed to a very common illness. So she was buried and we pressed on with our sole remaining chick. Our dog house on stilts worked for quite a while. The chicken quickly learned that the perch inside was her roosting spot at night and all was well, until she starting laying eggs. She liked to go into the coop to lay her eggs but it was random and I didnt want to be on egg hunt everyday. I needed a proper nesting box, which the coop didn't have. So I set out again to try and find better coop plans.

I finally found a plan on a forum website, www.backyardchickens.com/ I highly recommend that site for any info you are looking for if you have questions about raising a few chickens. The people that post there are super friendly and very knowledgeable.

The chicken coop design I used was from the people at Purina. It was relatively easy to build and perfomed all of the functions I needed it to. A place to roost at night safe from predators and a place for her to lay her eggs. It was a success! The coop was finished and the very next day without any coaching at all she hopped right up into the nesting box and laid her daily egg there.

Here is the link for the coop I built. This first one is a pdf.
Pictures and directions

Here is the materials list.
Material list.

Here are a few pics of the process.


The materials gathered.

Framing the roof.

With skylight!!

I think the kids want a clubhouse

Job complete

SUCCESS!!!

The egg picture was the very next day, without any coaching from me. No fake eggs, no holding her in place with a door, nothing. She naturally wanted to get up in that hidey hole to lay her egg.


This post was more my story about raising a chicken than it was a how to or information on raising chickens. I will make that my theme for this month. I will try to pass along some how to's and all the information I learned while raising a chicken.

I wish this story had a happy ending, IE our chicken on the dinner plate, alas it does not. It seems she has succumbed to global warming. I have no shade trees anywhere near my house. There was no where for her to get relief from this relentless heat we have had here the last month and a half. DAMN YOU AL GORE!! I will have to read up on what to do about overheating chickens. Stay tuned this month for that sort of info.


Y'all keep it straight out there.