Hi everyone. I am not new to chicken keeping or this board. I remember visiting it way back when I first started researching and keeping chickens around 2002. I remember when there were only a handful of coop pics here and those were my jumping off point for building my own coop. But then life took over and I didn't have time to peruse chicken boards.
So almost 10 years have past. Things have changed. We are down to one 16 yo daughter that we are homeschooling and she will graduate at the end of this year. We have moved and only have 1/5 of an acre with a 900 sq ft cottage to homestead on. (We used to rent an acre property that housed my soap business and our goats and chickens. I closed the biz and the property was sold and we had to get the animals off) So we are doing the best we can with a small house and a small yard. We have had about 4 different coops and I have learned a lot. We are about to build a new coop and hopefully it will be the perfect coop for us. I have spent all winter planning and researching this. Which is how I found my way back to here. I decided one day to see if this forum was still around and boy was I surprised! I had no idea so many people were into chicken keeping. How wonderful is that?
Anyway, I am not supposed to keep more than 4 chickens according to the county, but I usually have 15 or so and no body seems to be bothered. We asked our neighbors if they minded if we had chickens and goats and they all said no. I got them to sign a letter and I turned their signatures into out county supervisor. We also went to court to fight a citation from the county about our goats and won by default. They didn't show up. We got our fine back and no one has bothered us since, so we feel safe enough now that several years have gone by to put the money into a new coop and a new goat house.
We have the front left corner of our yard for the animals. It has street on two sides and our driveways on the other two sides. We are making a fruit garden all around the pen. The part that faces the main street now has 2 apple trees, one peach tree and lots of raspberry and blackberry bushes. Once the old coop and goat house is torn down, 2 more apple trees and a pear and a plum tree will go there with more berry bushes beneath. You can never have too many berries for jam making.
Our new coop & goat house will have a side walk between them and eventually we hope to have grapes growing over an arbor between them. We want to be a good example to our neighbors of how to keep backyard chickens and goats in a small yard in a clean and attractive way. We also sell eggs and will be setting up a better system to do that once the new coop is built.
So I hope to meet lots of chicken folks here. I do not show or breed. We just keep hens for eggs and let them live out their retirement years here as well. We have one chicken who is about 10 years old now. She still pops out a few eggs over the summer, but mostly she is retired. LOL!!! We enjoy the eggs very much and plan to keep chickens for the rest of our lives. We hope to show people that you can live a homesteading lifestyle on a small lot and do it in a productive and pleasing way. It is nice to meet all of you.
So almost 10 years have past. Things have changed. We are down to one 16 yo daughter that we are homeschooling and she will graduate at the end of this year. We have moved and only have 1/5 of an acre with a 900 sq ft cottage to homestead on. (We used to rent an acre property that housed my soap business and our goats and chickens. I closed the biz and the property was sold and we had to get the animals off) So we are doing the best we can with a small house and a small yard. We have had about 4 different coops and I have learned a lot. We are about to build a new coop and hopefully it will be the perfect coop for us. I have spent all winter planning and researching this. Which is how I found my way back to here. I decided one day to see if this forum was still around and boy was I surprised! I had no idea so many people were into chicken keeping. How wonderful is that?
Anyway, I am not supposed to keep more than 4 chickens according to the county, but I usually have 15 or so and no body seems to be bothered. We asked our neighbors if they minded if we had chickens and goats and they all said no. I got them to sign a letter and I turned their signatures into out county supervisor. We also went to court to fight a citation from the county about our goats and won by default. They didn't show up. We got our fine back and no one has bothered us since, so we feel safe enough now that several years have gone by to put the money into a new coop and a new goat house.
We have the front left corner of our yard for the animals. It has street on two sides and our driveways on the other two sides. We are making a fruit garden all around the pen. The part that faces the main street now has 2 apple trees, one peach tree and lots of raspberry and blackberry bushes. Once the old coop and goat house is torn down, 2 more apple trees and a pear and a plum tree will go there with more berry bushes beneath. You can never have too many berries for jam making.
Our new coop & goat house will have a side walk between them and eventually we hope to have grapes growing over an arbor between them. We want to be a good example to our neighbors of how to keep backyard chickens and goats in a small yard in a clean and attractive way. We also sell eggs and will be setting up a better system to do that once the new coop is built.
So I hope to meet lots of chicken folks here. I do not show or breed. We just keep hens for eggs and let them live out their retirement years here as well. We have one chicken who is about 10 years old now. She still pops out a few eggs over the summer, but mostly she is retired. LOL!!! We enjoy the eggs very much and plan to keep chickens for the rest of our lives. We hope to show people that you can live a homesteading lifestyle on a small lot and do it in a productive and pleasing way. It is nice to meet all of you.
