vlocklear
In the Brooder
Hello all - glad to finally join your group. I have been a lurker for a while as my chickens are approaching their first birthdays this month
and I just picked up six more today. It all started with a call from Agri Supply telling my DH that he won a chicken coop (even though he registered in a drawing for a gas grill lol). The chickens are a family project with my niece and nephew. We started out with three ISA Brown pullets and six Buff Orpington's which ended up being three males and three females. We "re-homed" two males and kept Sammy - after he fought off a stray dog to keep the ladies safe. As they got larger and needed more room, we built a new run - 8'X24' (actually 2 - 8'x12' so we could move them around to fresh grass) using cattle panels and hardware cloth and followed that with a new 8'x8' coop in time for winter. We kept the original coop and run inside the new run to use to isolate a chicken when needed and we will use it for the new chicken when they are big enough to go outside but to keep them separate from the older ones. We still have some work to do to finish the coop this spring - add more windows for summer ventilation, construct a permanent run that connects to the coop, and install an automatic door but overall we had fun building it and the ladies are happy because we got 4-6 eggs all winter long, without using artificial lights. Looking forward to learning a whole lot more and sharing ideas with all the chicken veterans!
