Oh, sorry. These are all very good questions. Seriously. I believe I asked all of these same questions when I first considered getting chickens. Living in the city, I thought we'd get a nice backyard flock of 4-6 chickens. I knew there were SO many pretty chickens that laid different colored eggs so I tried hard to narrow down my choices. I studied and reshuffled breed pictures, considered all of my choices and finally settled on 8 different breeds. Hmm... a couple more than I'd anticipated. So I hatched some baby chicks of my favorite breeds to add to the POL pullets I'd purchased from some of my favorite BYC breeders, and then had to keep a few more than I'd planned on
because I'd hatched them myself for crying out loud and now I'm like their MOTHER, so my flock grew to 10. That was the first year.
I also realized as I was hatching that I would need a grow out coop which would also double as an integration coop so the chickens could see each other without hurting each other until they could join the big flock. So I purchased one of those "kit coops" sold by Garden Sphere. I do not like the quality of the coop and have had to do a lot of jeri-rigging on it, but it's functional. So, now I was up to one large layer coop (8X12 footprint) and the mini coop.
Oh, then my light Sussex went broody that first year, so that small coop also became a broody/nursery coop. Wow, that mini coop is really getting a workout with all of it's uses. Maybe I need to add a
third coop to our backyard?
Fast forward to Summer 2012 - VF Coop Building World Tour. Wow. Now I have a beautiful new strongly built coop with a nice 4X4 house and enclosed run. In the meantime I hatched some beautiful little Silkies so now that coop is being used as a banty pen. Huh. I sure don't
remember planning on raising banties. I'm not sure exactly when that became a decision.
Oh well, I'm hoping when they go broody they can hatch in there and maybe the banty pen can double as a nursery since it's just Silkies... I mean, they're small, right?
Somehow -
I have
no idea how this happened, my small suburban lot that I thought I could raise 4-6 layers on, has turned into a lot filled with
12 layers, 5 Silkies, and 3 coops! And let's not forget the 2 small Seramas living in a bunny cage in my computer room that are also providing me with teeny tiny eggs... Thank goodness I got rid of those 8 roosters I
accidentally hatched this spring. At one point I think there were over 20 chickens at my house.
It's a sickness I'm telling you.
