The Chicken Project

Chickens are the reason I haven't been blogging lately.  

For a while now, I have been buying fresh eggs from a friend.  Then one day back in November, I said to myself, but not so much The Coach yet because that's a whole different paragraph:

"Why don't we get our own chickens?"

Right?  I figured several things would happen... We would have our own fresh eggs, and some fresh meat, and it would teach the kids something about the food chain as well as give them some responsibility.

So I dove in.  I did months worth of research.  I spent every spare minute I had researching breeds, coops, chicken environment, health concerns, and whatever else pertains to keeping your own backyard flock of chickens.  

In January, I felt confident enough to place an online order with a hatchery that was highly recommended.  We decided to keep 12 chickens (I say "we" loosely because The Coach went kicking and screaming throughout this process until the end) but the minimum order was 15.  Hmm.  I ordered 12 egg layers, and topped off the order with three "meat chickens".  We (again, used loosely because "we" in this scenario means Justice) could process them and use those for food.  I scheduled the shipment for the end of April, which meant we had three months to prepare for their arrival.

Initially, I did a quick coop search online and found some cute coops that you could order and put together at home.  After doing a ton of research and reading blogs and Facebook pages of chicken groups, however, we decided not to go with that idea.  We wanted something heavy duty and secure.  Every day somebody was losing a chicken to a predator, or wind was blowing over their coops or they were needing to be replaced after two years.  So, you know my motto... 

Go big or go home, right?  Right.  But honestly, I feel obligated to provide the chickens the most secure environment I can.  I'm responsible for their well being, and The Coach and I both felt that we needed to provide them a sturdy and safe place to live.

Now, lets talk about The Coach.

First of all, my husband loves me more than anything in the world.  He would have to to always help me follow through with my crazy plans.  And this is a great case in point.  Holy cow, if you could have been in the room for the first conversation about me wanting to keep a flock of chickens.  You wouldn't have EVER guessed I'd be writing this post.  But I know my husband, and he knows me.  I'm crazy.  Completely crazy.  I have the most hair-brained schemes and plans and he is patient and just lets me be me.  I knew that once the idea sank in and he had time to process it, he would agree to the idea.  That didn't mean he would think "Oh YAY, I can't wait to have chickens!" but he would agree to it.  He likens us to Lucy and Ricky, and that's honestly the best comparison to our personalities as you can get.  It makes me laugh every time I think of it.  

Eventually, a few weeks after I ordered the chicks, he came to me and said...

"All right woman, tell me your **** plan for these **** chickens.  (Enter deeeeeep sigh).

So we sat down, and I showed him the plans I had drawn for the coop.  He was pretty dead set at the beginning on providing the chickens a very safe place to live, so we decided to buy a very small utility barn and convert it to a coop, then build a covered run for them to hang out in during the day.  

Bo and I went shopping, and picked out this one.  It's 8x10, and more than enough room for a dozen chickens plus supply storage.

OK, so our lot is about 3/4 of an acre.  We fenced in about 1/2 an acre and left about 30 feet of treeline property behind the house untouched.  Joe thought it would be best if we took down the fence and cleared out some of the trees, and put the coop back there further away from the house.  

It took an entire month of Saturday's to remove the fence and clear out a spot big enough for the coop.  Woah, what a bunch of hard work.  

Here is a before and after shot of how much brush we cleared out.  That was months ago and we are only half way through the rest of the property and still have to put the fence back up.  It's been ridiculously hard work, but well worth it.  

Now you see where I've been for the entire year.  Sheesh.

So the day finally came that the chickens would arrive.  Bo was SO excited.  He couldn't wait.  Chickens had been the main topic of discussion for months in our house, and he was tired of waiting. The post office called me at 5:30 AM on their arrival day and told me I could come pick them up anytime.  Bo and I dropped the other boys off at school and went straight to get them.  

I had no idea what to expect.  I mean, chickens were coming in the mail.  

I crossed my fingers, and there they were.  16 chicks, all healthy and cheeping away in the box.  

Wait, 16?  But I ordered 15.  Oh.  They sometimes throw in an extra chick in case one doesn't make it through the trip.  In my case, this was a mystery "exotic" chick.  Ugh.  This did not please me.  First, the odds of it being a rooster were 50/50.  We are not keeping a rooster in our flock.  The type of exotic chick they sent was small boned and not good for eating either.  So the chances were pretty good I was going to have an ornamental rooster that we couldn't eat and I'd have to re-home somewhere.  I already figured the three "meat chickens" might be roosters too but that didn't matter since their fate was already sealed.  For the egg layers, I specifically ordered females.

Look at Bo's face.  Oh my goodness he is the happiest kid in the universe when he is playing with the chicks.

When they got here, we knew it would be about a month before they went outside, it was too cold and they were too little.  So I kept them in a big rubbermaid bin for the first two weeks.

Aw.  I mean really.

Even Jack loves the chicks.  This one in particular we call "Ginger" for probably obvious reasons.  This chick's feathers are the EXACT same color as Jack's hair. 

In the two weeks after the chicks came, we worked hard to get them a brooder pen built inside the coop so they could live in there safely in that awful stage where they are too big and messy to be in the house, but too small to live in the actual coop.  Thankfully we purchased a big enough mini-barn to be able to do that.  

This is the inside.  The brooder pen is perfect for them until they are big enough to live in the rest of the coop.  It's secure, has both feed and water, and a little roost.  When they are about 8 weeks old we will move them to the bigger area of the coop.  After we clean out the brooder pen I will use it to store feed and supplies until we need it for baby chicks again.  

They were really happy to get out of the rubbermaid bin and have more room to move around.

Hahaha.  Oh Bo.  He handles the chicks far more than the rest of us.  He is not afraid in the slightest.

This is the biggest chick at 4 weeks old.  This is "Knuckles the Meat Chicken" if you ask Jack, or "Knuckles, the Chicken Salad Soup Chicken" as Bo calls him.  Knuckles, his brother Godzilla and his sister Sasquatch are huge.  

 They are the chicks that I added to the order to get to 15.  They were bred to be eaten, and eaten they will be.  Justice will do the processing of the chickens.  One of the main goals I have with this project is that the kids will understand how the food chain works.  They all understand, even Bo, that some of these chickens will put food on our table in more ways than just eggs.  It will probably still be hard when the time comes, but we have worked out a good plan.  Justice will process the chickens, and I will not ask him to do the majority of the daily care to keep him from becoming attached to them.  Not at first anyway.  Jack, Bo and I will take care of the feeding, cleaning the coop, etc.  You may be wondering how Justice feels about this.  Justice is totally fine with it.  He has helped a family friend butcher small animals before and he is not an animal person.  He enjoys hunting and isn't a pet person.  Joe doesn't like animals either, and he certainly doesn't like these chickens much.  He will also be on the processing team if he is needed.

After the chicks were relocated inside the coop, we had the huge task of building the run ahead of us. I'm no engineer, but I drew up a set of plans that I hoped would work.  Simple 2x6 and 2x4 construction with a tin roof.  I wanted it to look like it belonged in the country so we chose the traditional barn red paint when we bought the coop and painted the run to match.

I'll spare most of the tedious building pictures with the exception of this one.  Joe was really concerned about safety.  We are backed up to farmland and there are raccoons, fox, Opossum, coyote,  snakes, and hawks.  Protection was absolutely paramount.

This picture is just to show how Joe dug a trench, 12 inches wide and deep, and covered it with 1/4 inch welded wire.  Nothing will be able to dig under this trench.  He is still contemplating running a hot wire around the perimeter but hasn't decided yet.  Most people he has talked to tells him he has already gone WAY over what's necessary to keep the predators out, so we will see.  All total we have 200 feet of welded wire covering the entire run.

Anyway, here it is!  Isn't it cute??  I love it!

We live in a fairly fancy subdivision.  The city just recently decided to allow people in the city limits to keep chickens, and I sure didn't want to be the one with the tacky redneck coop that ruined it for everybody else.  Plus, I didn't want to piss off my neighbors either.  It had to be nice looking.

This project was a six month learning experience, but worth every cent and minute that was put into it.

Oh!  I almost forgot!

Remember the "free exotic" chick?  Turns out I got very lucky.  The chick is indeed a "fancy" breed chick, but it's a girl.  And Jack is smitten with it.  It is a Polish Crested chicken, and it will have a huge bushy afro of feathers on its head as it gets older.  This chick started out with the name "Prince Von A-Hole" for a couple reasons.  I assumed it would be a boy, so it needed a boy name.  Second, he was a serious A-hole right out of the box, again leading me to assume it was a boy.  However, over the past few weeks it has changed its personality and is a really sweet little gal.  She will end up to be Jack's pet chicken.  She's not good for much else as far as eggs or meat is concerned.

We tried to rename her Zsa-Zsa because of her blond bushy hair, but Bo can't say it so they just call her Von.  It looks like Von is here to stay!