From Highlands Ranch, Colorado

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from Alabama. Glad you joined us.
 
Hi there! I live in Highlands Ranch also and have some hens. It's so exciting and my son (who is 2) loves to go each morning to check to see if there are any eggs! Let me know if you need some help!
 
Welcome from up the road in Ft Collins!

You'll find SO much great info here and great people too!

We're allowed to keep 6 hens here in the county, and we wanted eggs too. I did quite a bit of research on breeds and finally decided on Sexlinks. First, they're reasonably calm and quiet...we have touchy neighbors, LOL. Secondly, they produce early and often...nice large sized brown eggs (we average between 3 and 5 a day) Secondly, they're cold hardy. We didn't want to have to worry about insulation and heat and all that in the coop, so we thought that was the way to go.

We have an urban lot here which is nice sized but not huge, so we decided to go with a portable coop (also called a chicken tractor) We built a nice 9x9x9x9 run that's movable as well. We did this because we also have dogs and wanted them to have some grass as well, so we plunk the coop/run down in one spot and 3 or 4 days later, when it's been scratched over, we move it to another spot. So far, it's working out great.

If you're only going to have 4 chickens, you'll want your coop probably about 24 to 28 square feet. We kept ours on the smaller side so it would stay warmer in the winter. We also built it taller than the chickens can reach so the heat rises in the summer and the ventilation lets the air blow over them rather than on them. For designs...have a look here under coops...there are hundreds of them. We picked one of them from there for the looks and then modified it for ourselves...made the whole thing out of scrap we had on hand...spent about $80 all together for hinges, fasteners and mostly paint. If you don't have scrap laying around, check Craig's List and your local Freecycle...you can get lots of stuff for the effort of just picking it up :)
 
Hello from DU!

I just got my day old baby chicks in the mail yesterday. We got 8 girls because in Denver we are allowed to have 8 hens. My kids (7 year old boy, 10 year old girl) are ecstatic. Honestly, so am I! I wonder why everyone doesn't do it. You are in for a real treat.

My husband built our coop, it came out really cool. Very Ikea. We put a living roof on the top so I could garden there. I also have a friend in the Ranch that has 4 girls and her husband built her coop to look like an addition to their home. You wouldnt know that it wasn't an original part of the house. ;)

It has been a really fun undertaking. I am sure you will love it. Let me know if you want coop pictures.
 

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