I am so glad I found this site! My husband and I are pretty new to raising chickens and ducks. We did manage to raise a few last year until they were 2 months old and then we moved so we gave them to some family members who already had chickens. Now that we are in our home that we hope to be at for at least a few years, we make the big decision to get 6 RIR chicks and 2 Pekin ducklings. We are also planning to get some Cornish Rocks (or crosses) in another month or two. We started out wanting 8 total chickens and ducks, but now we are planning to have about twenty. Definitely addicting. We are still in the process of finding our plans and building our coop/run (procrastinators, I know). Our first batch of chicks are only about 10 days old, and our ducklings are about 6 days old. We just keep them in the same brooder together. If anyone knows of any coop/run plans that are big enough for 20 chickens, and good for Central Illinois, please point me to them! I would love to let them free range, but with two dogs bred and trained for hunting and flushing fowl, that is just not a good idea. We are *attempting* to teach them not to mess with the chickens, but if anyone has any ideas on that it would be appreciated as well! Very exciting about raising our chicks and ducklings!
and Welcome To BYC! Check out the BYC Coops section, there are a lot of medium and large coops, maybe one of them might fit your needs 
