A few questions on starting a small flock

[possumqueen]

Okay, then you have an 80 square foot RUN. That IS different from the coop. But being in AZ you could probably keep your food and water outdoors, which will mean a lot less mess inside the coop itself. You would need roosting space for your birds inside the coop, and you would want to lock them up at night to protect them from predators.

Next best place to go is Coop and Run Design and Construction in the Index. TONS of great stuff there!

 

[rainnotebook]

Cool I will do that.

Something else I'm going to do, is put a ceiling on the coop and the run. We do have hawks that hang around here and there is no way I'm letting them get my chickens.

So would I need to shut the door to the chicken coop? Since its all fenced in anyways?

 

[PortageGirl]

Quote:
Not if the fence is strong enough, and that's hard to do. Some predators can be very determined, and sneaky. Read up on the predator page and find out what you have in your area. I've been to AZ and even in many urban areas you may still have coyotes, dogs of course, fox?, are there javelina where you live? they can root under a fence to get to chicken feed, and in a pinch, they'll eat meat (read chickens!) bobcat? (I suspect maybe)

It IS possible to build a fence strong enough to keep out most of these, even at night. You may want to provide extra shade for them for in summer, possibly broken up shade like from trellis board. You could even make a whole side of your coop mostly heavy guage hardware cloth, so there's LOTS of ventilation since 40 degrees is NOTHING to a chicken. If you have a month or so of colder weather, you can screw on panels over top of it for that month or so, take them down later.

All just ideas... my fingers got moving and I couldn't stop myself!

 

[rainnotebook]

We do have javelina but we already have a fenced area before the chicken coop/run would start. I've honestly not had any problems with them even though I do have a vegetable garden. Plus we have a big St Bernard/Boxer mix that keeps animals out of our yard. (she wouldn't be allowed to play with the chickens though!)

I've heard of mountain lions in the surrounding areas but again never seen them. But we do have coyote and dogs that are in the area. The biggest predators we have are snakes and hawks. My neighbor has chickens and have only had problems with those predators.

But you make a good point about if they are persistent they'll get through. I will make it a habit to close and open but if I miss a night I won't worry my little heart out.

I just love this forum! You guys are totally awesome!

 

[KandJsmama]

If I could start over I would have chosen some different breeds for the variety. We have 3 black stars and 3 Easter Eggers but I long for some opringtons, dominiques and cochins. We need to keep our flock small so for now I will be content with the breeds we have. Next time I will definitely order many different breeds.