No clue what i'm doing.

[chixrme]

You are getting lots of good advice. Many of us started out just as you are, with lots of questions, and not much experience. It is SO much fun! Re the guineas: I have 56 of them and they make a lot of racket, which we love,and they DO announce visitors, dogs, etc.. but they never "attack" like geese will. Geese are better watch dogs, but remember this: no matter what the fowl is, they all roost quietly at night and let any predator have its way with the flock. I loved letting the chickens free range but lost 2 to a fox, in one day, so now I use 1Premier's nylon/electric poultry fencing around an acre and so far haven't had any heartbreaks. My last comment: A farm is not complete until at least one roo announces the sun's rise and fall. Enjoy and keep posting.

 

[patandchickens]

Cute little barn!

Unless it is rather atypically constructed, it most likely will have open spaces between the rafter tails above the end wall. Coons and possums can easily get in thru them -- yes, I know the openings look too small, but coons and possums can squish down pretty flat when food is involved. So I would suggest building a smaller, REALLY predator-resistant coop inside the barn to shut the girls into at night.

You don't want goats eating your chicken food - for health as well as economic reasons - but it should be relatively easy to build a sort of lattice-y type box out of 2x6s to contain the area w/the chicken feeder, sized so the chickens can get in to eat but the goats can't. Kind of like the goat-and-chicken version of a foal creep, if you are at all familiar with horse breeding

Good luck, it sounds like you're well on your way to lots of fun

Pat

 

[Badhbh]

I was able to get back over to the house and take a good look at the barn. There's no spaces in the eaves. Yay. I've come up with an idea to make a wire cage type thing in the corner of the barn.. i'm basically going to frame in a corner of the barn and wire it all around, add roosts and nesting boxes, and a pop hole. Viola

On the outside of the barn i'll add a run area. My wish list is up to about 15 chickens, so that should make a nice large area inside the barn that will be secure enough for everyone. I think it might work

 

[Mac]

So you've decided not to free range and let them out in a run now? I only ask because in an earlier post you mentioned that the school was across the "road". They may cross the road and could get hit by a car.

Mac

 

[pattycake]

Seems to me you'd be best off fencing your property if it's just 3/4 of an acre. That's plenty of room to free-range, but they might wander off. I have 3 acres and no fence, but they get close enough to the road for me to get nervous. It's a high-traffic road so I'm pretty certain they're scared to get *too* close, but they could easily be chased into it by a cat.

Chickens will pick a run clean of greenery in no time, so if you want them to get the good green stuff you either have to supply it or let them out...

Oh, hey, I live by a school, too! So far, the noise the kids make keeps my chickens away.

 

[Badhbh]

Yes, I decided against the roaming. A coworker that lives on that side of the river told me that there are actually quite a few coyotes running around town at night! So I think some supervised ranging in a tractor every once in a while is as close as we'll get to free ranging

I do plan on a large pen though.