I've wanted to have chickens for a long time, but I was overwhelmed at the prospect. But recently we had friends - the Filters (specifically their daughter Ella) - that were looking to rehome their chickens and another friend - Cathy Shurtleff - that was getting rid of a coop. We felt like we needed to take advantage of the opportunity.
Since we never use our gazebo, we decided to use it as an expanded enclosure. We figured the netting would keep out snakes.
We knew we'd need some bird netting to keep out owls and hawks since the gazebo top has rips.
We bought hardware cloth to keep predators from digging under the enclosure.
David and Jalen dug trenches a foot into the ground all the way around the outside and we were burying the hardware cloth.
It was hours of hard work.
David and I woke up at 6:30 on Saturday morning to finish it up since we were going to pick up the chickens that day. After days and days of work, our backyard neighbor came out to complain that it looked like we had landed something from outer space on her fence. It was a ridiculous thing to say because it's a gazebo and it looks like a gazebo. Plus, the passive aggressive way she did it was infuriating. ("It's your yard so there's nothing I can do about it, but I don't like it.") This coming from a woman who hangs grocery bags as decorations in her windows. I wanted to ask her if she was concerned about us blocking her view into our backyard. The crazy thing is, the coop only occupied one small corner of her yard - on our side of the fence. We could have left it, but we didn't want her complaining about the chickens so we pulled everything up and moved it.
It ended up being a good move because our neighbors on the side where we put the coop (Sheila & John) are great and they were excited about the chickens. The saddest part is I was looking forward to seeing them from my kitchen window and now I can't.
We weren't able to finish on Saturday, but we needed to get the chickens on Sunday so we had to keep working on the coop on Sunday. We buried the hardware cloth horizontally instead of vertically. We decided the netting of the gazebo wouldn't be strong enough to stop predators other than snakes so we bought more wire. We knew we had to finish the coop before we went to bed to make sure they would be safe.
We transported the chickens in Tashi's kennel.
We got wood chips from Brother Biewer who makes Adirondack chairs and has a ton of it. We initially tried to use these feeders created by President Shurtleff, but they just didn't work for us. It was too hard for the chickens to get to the food and it kept getting wet.
The chickens seemed to like their new home.
Meanwhile, David and I went to work securing the additional wire to make sure they were safe from racoons and other predators.
It took us much longer than we expected and we didn't finish until after dark, in the rain, and lightening. It was a little concerning to be working with wire with lightening close by, but by the time we finished, we felt the chickens were safe.
I figured it would take the chickens a few days to acclimated and start laying, but we had our first egg the very next morning!
I fried it up for Jalen and he had the privilege of eating our first egg.
Millie is a Serama bantam - the smallest chicken breed in the world and she lays the cutest eggs.
Cleo is a feather footed bantam Cochin/Pekin.
The bigger hens are Blue Easters. Savannah is a bearded and Georgia is not. Savannah is by far the most obstinate of them all.
At the end of our first week, we already had over a dozen eggs! They're so pretty!
We decided to have a big Saturday breakfast and do a taste test. We fried the big eggs and scrambled the little ones.
David did a taste test analysis to compare the home grown eggs with the store bought ones.
Yummy!!
Observations: Store bought eggs have shells that are much more fragile and they take longer to cook. Home grown eggs have a richer flavor and have more substance.
Since the chickens had been enclosed for a week, we decided to try free ranging them for short periods of time. We have to be careful because we have hawks and owls in our neighborhood. They loved digging for bugs!
I did not feel they were adequately impressed with my gourmet buffet. (David created little feeders from tomato cages.)
Eventually they warmed up a little bit, but seemed to prefer eating from the ground.
Our coop isn't perfect, but it's worked great so far.
So far, we are absolutely loving having chickens. And in case you're wondering, our "free" chickens have cost $260.86. Totally worth it! We only need 95 dozen eggs until the chickens have paid for themselves.
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