Hey we got a First Timer...

Newb here, first time raising chickens past a few weeks. We are a family of 6 who aquired enough land about a year ago to finally have chickens. We have 3 girls and a boy(6,3,21 month old twins). My wife is an Bio Tech teacher and hatches chicks with her class each year, and we were finally fortunate enough to start the journey to raising them to maturity.

We just got our chickens about 3-4 weeks ago and the have gone throught the process of shedding their feathers they had as chicks. (I know I have to learn all the technical Jargon). We brought them home in a Brooder Pen my wife had at school.

Currently we have 5 chickens, 1 Araucana, 1 Buff, and 3 Rhode Island Reds. We just spent the weekend building their new coop and have a little paint/trim/predator protection to complete before moving them to their new home.

We are a pretty active family, obviously with 4 little ones. We enjoy spending time out side hiking, fishing, camping, swimming and finding all kinds of critters. We live on 2.5 acres 1/2 of which is wooded and the girls like catching frogs, turtles and generally anything that wont bite back. We usually have a frog for a night or two at least once a week.

In addition to our new chickens we have 1 small dog who is about 9 years old and so far is pretty curious of the chickens but hasnt done much other than bark at them. We haven't let him get too close yet but he seems to tolerate them so far.

I have looked through the site for a couple of years off and on, but got pretty serious about viewing posts and coop ideas last year after we moved into our new house with plenty of land. I have learned a lot of stuff i will soon be putting into practice so thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts and bouts of wisdom. I will be posting pictures of our coop build and setup over in the build section and will get some pictures up once the chickens are moved in.

Thanks,
Cody