Introducing Myself

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ScottsdaleChickens said:
We are brand spanking new to raising chickens. We started 3 mos ago as something to do during quarantine especially for our adult special needs daughter. We started with 5 New Hampshire Reds and immediately found that all kinds of things came up that we needed to know about and that’s how we found you! What a great site!!

One chick died almost immediately and the other 4 were attacked out in the garden in a chicken wire enclosure with a baby gate on top by some unknown predator almost immediately when we went inside for 20 minutes. We had only seen rabbits snd squirrels there before. They were nit eaten. Only the heads had blood on them. We never discovered what it was but we were devastated.

That led to our present 6 chickens 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 IDEAL, 2 Easter Eggers. We like the variety as they have such different personalities.

My husband spent 3 mos building a coop and run and friends now call it the Taj Mahal of chicken coops or the 4 seasons of coops. We live on 2 1/2 acres of desert with lots of trees and bushes. We have every kind if predator from coyote to great horned owl, snake etc. after losing the first 5 we were determined to make this predator proof and so far it has been. We also wanted to be able to go away sometimes and although we have some young boys who can watch them we wanted to
Make everything automatic. We are also suffering
From extreme heat. Today it will be 116. I learned a lot from this page about putting bricks in pans of water and feeding frozen treats. We also have a fan and a misting system which has been a godsend.

We enjoy everything about having chickens. It has surprised us how attached we have become!!

We have another building on our property with 3 - 1 bedroom casitas that we rent as short term vacation rentals. The guests - that know we have chickens - the coop is discreetly placed among the trees on the other side of the pool wall - love having them there.

All your advice and experience shared gere has been a godsend!!! Thank you.
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Welcome to BackYardChickens! So glad to have you here in our wonderful community of friendly, helpful, knowledgeable people! We call our coop/run the "Chick-Mahal". We aren't skilled enough to have built it ourselves so we had a local construction company do it according to our plans. VERY predator proof. Horrible to lose your first chicks...it's a very hard learning experience.
 

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