Hello all,
I'm new to the forum and chickens, for the most part. When I was younger, 2-7 y/o, I lived on a 200 acre farm in southern MD. I raised chickens as part of 4H. I don't really remember it since I was so young. At 8 I moved out to Colorado and to the city/suburbs.
Fast forward 24 years to last year. I lived in Denver and was eating a lot of eggs as part of my nutrition plan and hated paying for the them. So I decided to gt some chickens. I looked into the laws here and got my permit, did some research and built a coop for them. I bought 6 Golden Comets and 2 Rhode Island Reds. They were a blast! I let them free range in the back of my yard, which was about 15' wide by 15' deep. I had a 6' privacy fence around my yard. Being in the city I didn't think I had to worry about predators. How wrong I was
I came out one morning and found the 6 larger birds dead and my two smaller ones gone. Later that day my neighbor said he watched a coyote use his pop up camper, which he conveniently parked against my fence, as a step, jumped into my yard, then jumped onto of the coop back out of the yard with two chickens in its mouth. Sad day for all.
Well now I'm moving into a house in Littleton, CO. It has a nice size backyard so I'm going to do chickens again, but right this time. I'm plan on 10 ladies this time and building a 10'x12' coop with a completely fenced, buried 2' down and all, 10'x5' run.
My girl really loved the chickens and my son is almost 1, so he will get to enjoy them growing up as well. I can't wait to get all settled in so I can start building the coop for the ladies. I'll get them this spring and we can't wait.
I look forward to reading and learning a lot from the people here.
Jason
I'm new to the forum and chickens, for the most part. When I was younger, 2-7 y/o, I lived on a 200 acre farm in southern MD. I raised chickens as part of 4H. I don't really remember it since I was so young. At 8 I moved out to Colorado and to the city/suburbs.
Fast forward 24 years to last year. I lived in Denver and was eating a lot of eggs as part of my nutrition plan and hated paying for the them. So I decided to gt some chickens. I looked into the laws here and got my permit, did some research and built a coop for them. I bought 6 Golden Comets and 2 Rhode Island Reds. They were a blast! I let them free range in the back of my yard, which was about 15' wide by 15' deep. I had a 6' privacy fence around my yard. Being in the city I didn't think I had to worry about predators. How wrong I was
I came out one morning and found the 6 larger birds dead and my two smaller ones gone. Later that day my neighbor said he watched a coyote use his pop up camper, which he conveniently parked against my fence, as a step, jumped into my yard, then jumped onto of the coop back out of the yard with two chickens in its mouth. Sad day for all.Well now I'm moving into a house in Littleton, CO. It has a nice size backyard so I'm going to do chickens again, but right this time. I'm plan on 10 ladies this time and building a 10'x12' coop with a completely fenced, buried 2' down and all, 10'x5' run.
My girl really loved the chickens and my son is almost 1, so he will get to enjoy them growing up as well. I can't wait to get all settled in so I can start building the coop for the ladies. I'll get them this spring and we can't wait.
I look forward to reading and learning a lot from the people here.
Jason
and Welcome to BYC! Good luck with your new girls, X2 on the bigger you can do the run the happier you will all be. Sorry about the loss of your first flock. Coyotes are getting so used to humans they are almost as bad as stray dogs.
