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aresto

Chirping
Oct 6, 2024
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Greetings everyone!

I am new to chickens. I want to learn before I start. I plan to build a coop in October and also want to purchase chicks. My goal is to have 5-6 laying hens.

We live in southeast Alaska, so I am learning about cold tolerant chickens. Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated. I am learning with a homestead book, YouTube, and now I hope to learn from this platform.

My interest for having my own chickens is to hopefully start a small homestead. We love eggs, love pets, and it would be a great place to start growing, caring, and producing our own organic food.

I love woodworking and I am definitely looking forward to building the chicken coop.

My family and I have talked a lot about the idea of having our own homestead starting with chickens and a vegetable raised garden bed. We have a little dog, but don’t know for how much longer due to my dog being sick 😔. She’s been a part of our family for 11 years since she was a few months old.

I learned about this community from a YouTube video.

I look forward to learning from you!

Miguel
 
Howdy!

My article on cold weather housing has a bunch of Alaska pointers:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/cold-weather-poultry-housing-and-care.72010/

Of course, with you being in SE, it is way warmer there!

So, you should plan the most for ice and rain, not snow. A huge and fully covered run would probably be wonderful.

Also, you should think of how to feed the chickens. From what I understand, feed is even more expensive over there, since you are off the road system. Chickens can forage for much of what they eat, but depending on where you are, they might need a guard dog to forage safely.
 
welcome to BYC!
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It gets pretty cold here (I'm in northern Idaho.) It can get like -28°F and I have some chickens that have large combs so they shouldn't do too well with that weather, but I make sure the coop is well ventilated and I haven't had too much trouble with frostbite. It think keeping the coop dry is the key. Welcome to BackYard Chickens!
 
aresto said:
Greetings everyone!

I am new to chickens. I want to learn before I start. I plan to build a coop in October and also want to purchase chicks. My goal is to have 5-6 laying hens.

We live in southeast Alaska, so I am learning about cold tolerant chickens. Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated. I am learning with a homestead book, YouTube, and now I hope to learn from this platform.

My interest for having my own chickens is to hopefully start a small homestead. We love eggs, love pets, and it would be a great place to start growing, caring, and producing our own organic food.

I love woodworking and I am definitely looking forward to building the chicken coop.

My family and I have talked a lot about the idea of having our own homestead starting with chickens and a vegetable raised garden bed. We have a little dog, but don’t know for how much longer due to my dog being sick 😔. She’s been a part of our family for 11 years since she was a few months old.

I learned about this community from a YouTube video.

I look forward to learning from you!

Miguel
Click to expand...
Welcome Miguel. I love Alaska. The good news is that chickens are far better off in cold weather than hot weather. My Speckled Sussex, Australorps, Delaware and silkies do well in the cold weather. In fact, they love it. My barred rocks do well in cold weather as well. You have a lot of serious predators. I would go with an electric fence and 1/2 inch hardware cloth needs to be your best friend, everywhere and to prevent predator digging. For 5-6 hens, I would convert at least an 8x8 shed into a coop (or build the like), and build at least a 20x30 foot run if this is possible (with 1/2 inch hardware cloth walls, ceilings and aprons)
 

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