All about our chicken coop, chicken-rearing, and the like! Finally, the girls’ big debut.

Finally, the girls are getting the attention they deserve and have deserved for MONTHS! A blog post all about them and their fantastic little home in our backyard. And now that they’re out of their awkward teen phase (above–it’s an old picture), they’re ready for their close-up! Well, would you look at you, pretty girl, with your perfect red comb! Parker is here reading over my shoulder saying, “Rooster’s comb is my favorite. It’s like a hat.”This is me letting them out in the morning (most often, tasked to the boys which they do sooo happily). The way they come out–one by one with a delightful little thud on the dirt below–always gives me a chuckle. In a sing-songy voice, I like to say, “good morning!” to them one by one. I also like to think they lay happier eggs this way, and in turn, a happier breakfast for me and mine. That’s how it works, right?We’ve got three Buff Orpingtons (the more yellow ones) and two Golden Comets. Rosie, “the twins” (Anders calls one “my cute”), Rooster (not actually a rooster), and Phyllis. Phyllis was the first to lay an egg (July 23! Parker’s birthday! Also the day our house was struck by lightning! What a day!) and, as such, is my favorite. Just kidding, I love them all the same. (That’s actually a lie–one of the Buffs runs away from me sometimes when I’m trying to corral them back into the coop and she tests my patience every time she does this.) This is just before one of them got ticked at me holding her and began flapping wildly to get free, hence my look. I’ll let Steve tell you a little bit about the “coop” and “run” and here he is. He’s also decided to not capitalize certain words which is surprising for a professor.
Steve: because we did not know anything about this when we started, i’m going to talk about this like you might not know anything either. no offense is intended or implied. The coop is on top and where the girls sleep on their roost bars. There’s two bars which is more than enough room for our 5 girls. They walk the drawbridge (that’s what we call it) up into the coop at night and they stay up their until it starts to get light out. In the morning, they make their way “down stairs” to the “run” (hence, the coop is a “roost over run” style.), where, because we got the extension, they stretch their legs, get a bit of a drink and perhaps eat some food. We’ve used the feeder from Roost and Root, and like it a lot (it holds about a week’s worth of food for our hungry girls), but could not get them to go for their watering system, so we jerry-rigged our own. You can see the blue 3-gallon bucket with poultry nipples in some of the pictures. Once we let them out in the morning, we check for eggs. The egg-laying boxes are on the back-side of the coop. We think they love it in there, as we often find one just doing her thing when we check. Phyllis can really take her time getting ready in the morning. The picture below gives you some sense of how i clean the whole place. First, i try to do it about once a week. To clean the coop above, I use a normal BBQ brush with a scraper. I scrape the hardware cloth where they walk (and poop) upstairs first and then brush the poop down to the “run” to get their bedroom really good and clean. The “run” area has construction grade sand under foot, which so far has been great. It drains the rain well (so they’re never standing in puddles) and it functions something like kitty-litter for their poop. So, after popping off the two carabiners that hold the two sections of the “run” together in the middle, I slide the “extension run” off of my green-treated 4 x 4 base toward the cedar fence. it’s light so it’s really a piece of cake. i rake all of the poop into a pretty big pile of sand, and then rake the pile onto my home-made 2′ x 4′ cedar sifter (with 1/4″ hardware cloth) to sift the sand back into the “run”. Once I’ve done that, i dump the poop off the sifter into our woods out back. After raking it out a bit inside, then i just slide the extension back into place, reattach the two carabiners, and i’m done. The whole process takes about 15 minutes from beginning to end. the girls are always so grateful too. I know we’ve talked about this before too, but i want to mention the “predator apron” one more time. I can’t recommend this enough. We’ve had evidence of multiple attempts on our young girls’ lives at night! Someone’s digging, trying to get in under the base! We’re assuming it’s raccoons, but it might also be coyotes. The coop and run are really solid, so the only way in is to tunnel, like in “the great escape” (Bridget here: or Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption style). Anyway, the “predator apron” has kept them out every time so far! With a pneumatic staple gun, attach the 2′ wide green “hard-ware cloth”–note: it’s just called that but it’s actually solid green wire–to the bottom of your green treated 4 x 4 base all the way around, overlapping it in the four corners. Then just cover it with some dirt. You can see the “green cloth” in the dirt in some of the pictures above. And you can see it there because our girls keep scratching the wood chips off of it!       Bridget again: If it’s not obvious to you, we love this coop. It’s so sturdy and well built, and also attractive. Plus, it even has a window box to decorate it with flowers. Ours is very shaded, so I didn’t make good use of that this summer, but I plan to next summer. We’re also going to make an edible garland for them at Christmas time. Yes, we’re those people now. Did you catch above the door where it says Hunt’s Happy Hens? One of my favorite parts. Oh, before we move away from the logistics of the coop, I want to showcase how incredibly organized and efficient Roost and Root is when sending the parts of your coop–everything labeled and the instructions were impeccable. Steve was very impressed. This is the nesting box. Sometimes I go to try and fetch the eggs when one of the girls is still doing her thing in there and it feels akin to walking in on someone going to the bathroom. I always apologize and come back later. Unless, of course, I really need an egg for breakfast and then I might try to sneak under her and grab one.For the locals: we got our chickens at Dodge’s Agway in Hampton. They are absurdly inexpensive–like $3 or something–which feels a little sacrilegious when you’re considering you’re buying an actual life. We got them very early March (a wonderful pandemic purchase, really), and, like I said, July 23 was the first egg. They’re fully grown now and these breeds are quite hardy so they shouldn’t have trouble through the New England winters. Also, there are winter panels that we will install in the top portion of the coop fairly soon.
Pros and cons with chickens. Let’s do the cons first. They poop a lot. They scratch all day long–scratch, scratch, jump back, and look at where they’ve scratched. I find it very endearing, but if you’re trying to keep your yard just so, good luck with that. They’ve shifted what was once nice and evenly laid wood mulch all over the place. Anders’ con, “they peck you.” It’s true, but this isn’t so much intentional as when they think you’ve got a speck of food on you. They can be little escape artists. We’ve since clipped their wings and they stay put more now. We still eat chicken, just not these chickens, and yes I understand that there’s a certain level of mental gymnastics that goes alongside that. Imagine the times when I was actually preparing chicken for dinner back when they were little chicks still living inside our house. Also, there will come a time when they stop laying, but still live for awhile beyond their laying years. I think we will then just have chicken pets. We’ll see. The pros–they are way funnier and sweeter than I would have imagined. They really are fun little creatures. The amount of time Parker and Anders have spent giggling in the backyard alongside them is more than I’d have imagined. Parker as he looks off dreamily, “One time when I was feeling lonely and bored, I just went and sat with one, and she just stayed there on my lap.” Another pro–eggs! They each lay one a day. This will drop off in wintertime, but we’re loving collecting fresh eggs and eating them almost every day. I’m still not sure we’re actually saving money with them, when you consider the food we purchase, but I don’t dwell on that too long, lol. Now for some throwback pictures of the girls. I’d like you to imagine Kenny Rogers’ Through the Years playing as you scroll. So, here we are. The end of my chicken post. If you have any other questions, please leave them in the comments and Steve or myself will be sure to answer them. And my highlight on Instagram has some additional chicken info as well. Thank you for reading! And thank you forever to Roost and Root for providing the most amazing chicken coop ever!