Hello, fellow chicken enthusiasts! 😊

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strawbeebawk

In the Brooder
Jul 11, 2025
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Hey there! Long time lurker, but now I have an account lol.

My mom, little sister, and I started raising chickens back in 2020. Our family had just purchased some land, so we spent our quarantine time caring for our new chickens. Now that I have my own house in the countryside, I've started building my own flock. I currently have 9 chickens. I started out with 5 olive egger mutts my sister hatched that are the sweetest chickens I've ever met. Ordered some more from Meyer, and now I also have a Welsummer, a silkie, a black copper maran, and a green queen bantam. I may or may not have ordered 4 more 😬 so if they all make it when they arrive, I'll have two zombies, a chocolate orpington, and a penciled plymouth rock for 13 total chickens.

I love everything about raising chickens so far, but I think the most rewarding is earning the trust of these birds. They're so fragile as chicks, and the fact that they can learn to trust us is so precious. My second batch of chicks is more flighty than my first (especially the maran), but they are all coming around and starting to trust that I am here to help. I have some snuggly birds in my first batch that love scritches and cuddles while I'm in their run.

My mom and little sister have their own flocks, and all three of us are kind of crazy chicken ladies, especially my sister and I. We are obsessed and fully in 😂 We are going halfsies on a fancy incubator next year.

I'm so happy to finally be in a place in life where I have my own flock. It's a lot of responsibility to care for these little guys, but they are well worth the effort. I've been an animal lover my entire life, I've worked as a full-time dog groomer, have shown dogs before, and I still groom on the side. My three cats are very respectful of the chickens, one of my toy poodles is terrified of the birds because one pecked her out of curiosity lol, and her sister will herd them 😂 so no more poodles in the chicken run.

Happy to be here 😊 Picture of my cockerel included. He's from my first batch of chicks, and he is very handsome. If any of them had to turn out to be a rooster, I'm glad it was him and his cute crest.
 

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janiedoe said:
Welcome to BYC. I would suggest adding more silkies to your order. One silkie in a standard flock will be in danger of bullying and injury.
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I'll go ahead and do that! I won't turn down an excuse to get more chickens lol. I'll add a pair of silkies to my order. I thought the green queen bantam I got would be about the silkie's size, but they're about 5 weeks old and my silkie is a little shrimp even next to the other bantam. I have kept an eye on her. So far, no pecking or anything, but I have noticed she hangs back when the others come up to me. I don't think they have directly attacked her, but she definitely doesn't feel like she is a part of the group.
 
DobieLover said:
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.

How large is your coop and run?
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My run is 9' x 13' and the coop is 9 square feet upstairs, not including the nesting boxes and downstairs section. They are allowed to free range when I'm home and can watch them. The current coop is more of a temporary coop. The metal run I have comes in smaller sections, so I am going to buy a small run, attach it to my current one, line it with hardware cloth, put leftover metal siding on the outside, and give them some more nesting boxes and roosts. Or I may just buy the same size run that I got before and close off the back of it to make the coop. I'm trying to eventually create chicken paradise so they have lots of room to roam even if they have to stay in the run.
 
strawbeebawk said:
My run is 9' x 13' and the coop is 9 square feet upstairs, not including the nesting boxes and downstairs section. They are allowed to free range when I'm home and can watch them. The current coop is more of a temporary coop. The metal run I have comes in smaller sections, so I am going to buy a small run, attach it to my current one, line it with hardware cloth, put leftover metal siding on the outside, and give them some more nesting boxes and roosts. Or I may just buy the same size run that I got before and close off the back of it to make the coop. I'm trying to eventually create chicken paradise so they have lots of room to roam even if they have to stay in the run.
Click to expand...
You have enough room for 3 chickens.
You need 3.5-4 sq ft, 1 linear foot of roost and as close to 1 sq ft of permanently open ventilation per bird in the coop for good health and hygiene.
The run needs to provide an additional 15 sq ft per bird with lots of things to do in the run.
Without proper space and enrichment the birds will quickly become stressed and start very bad behaviors.
Not to mention it's going to be much more difficult for you to keep their environment clean and healthy when they are overpopulating the amount of space. I strongly recommend you start work immediately on building a new coop or modifying a shed into a coop and greatly expanding their run. Good luck!
 
I agree w @DobieLover that the coop needs to be larger. The bare minimum is 3' per bird and that is if they get out of the coop. Our run is too small for the 10 birds in our coop (36 sq') and the run is only 5 x 13 But they free range all day every day. There may be several days in the winter, during sub 0/low teens temps, that they are not out. So we squeak by.
 

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