Coop Building... a long overdue update.

We finally got around to watching Food, Inc, which left me feeling a renewed dedication to our urban chickening/gardening projects.

So, I figured it's also time to get around to making another blog post. The girls have been growing steadily over the past month, while the coop building has been, well, not so steady.

It's amazing how quickly chickens go from the fuzzy egg-shaped balls of cuteness (see previous posts), through their awkward/ugly half-feathered phase and begin to look like real chickens. The feathers started on the wings...

and quickly spread...

Please forgive the horrible flash photo. Unfortunately, we don't have more pictures of the in-between stages since we've been so focused on getting the coop built in time to move the girls outside. Even before we had the chickens Conor spent quite a bit of time learning to use Google Sketch-Up and made us a great plan to get the coop building started. Of course, there have been plenty of modifications, both accidental and intentional, along the way. The pre-planning has really paid off and the coop is turning out incredibly well.

We started by laying a 2x4 frame lined with wire mesh on top of some paving stones to create the foundation for the coop. The mesh will, hopefully, keep the city rats from finding their way into the coop by digging their way in. We also ran the wire outside of the frame up to the foundation of our garage.

The entire frame is recessed into the ground so that we can bury it and have a dirt floor for the chickens to scratch around in. With the foundation in place, we framed the front and back walls. Because of the limited space behind the coop, we attached the wire mesh and back wall of the henhouse to the back wall before putting it up.

The back wall is a bit taller than the front wall so that roof slants towards the front. The previous owners of the house left us some shingles, so we're using those for the roof.

Here I am, helping with the roof by taking photos of Conor putting the shingles on. You can also see the back wall of the henhouse. With the roof completed, we moved on to the finishing out the rest of the henhouse. We started with the floor, mostly because we were scared to start the walls which include doors, windows, nest boxes, etc... The floor was quick and painless, so we were forced to move on to the more complicated parts. Considering that neither of us really know what we're doing, I'm really happy with how they've turned out.

First, we cut out the holes for the nest boxes and two small windows and then attached the wall to the frame.

With the wall up, we attached 2x2s to the outside and continued to build the nest boxes.

We had planned on having the top hinged and flip up, but decided to have the face of the nest box on hinges to make it easy to clean it out.

More coming...

Chicken Coop Madness

I had every intention to write a post over the weekend with more ridiculously cute photos, but I was busy with other things, including some intense coop designing. I promise to post more photos soon, there are plenty to make you ooh and ahh, as we've been shooting them everyday since we got them. They're definitely getting bigger and starting to have more personality. Their wing and butt feathers (pin feathers) are coming in pretty quickly, and the feather pattern is already established on the golden laced wyandotte - I'll try to get a photo of this, but it's difficult to keep her still long enough to capture this. Regardless, it's pretty cool to see. They're growing so fast though, I'm anxious to get a move on with the coop.

After searching the internet for possible coop plans, we decided on a variation of the "playhouse coop," which was designed by a chicken keeper, the plans of which cost $30. Some fun examples and variations on the theme can be found at Backyard Chickens. Thinking that the design looked simple enough, I decided to take a shot at some drafting. This is where the "intense" coop designing part comes from, over a rainy day I spent close to 5 hours using Google Sketch Up to get the bare bones frame designed with the dimensions we were wanting. We decided to make the coop a little smaller than is suggested (about 3 Sq feet per bird instead of 4), so we could have a larger run area for them - something which different sources say is legit. Having never built anything this complicated, it's a fun process trying to figure out all the essential elements, and realizing what you're missing - like a door.

Tim is more experienced with construction, and he helped a ton with some fine tuning. The whole thing is going to be 4' w x 12' l x 6' h, with the coop being 3.5' x 4' x 4'. We were able to see a couple coops this weekend (more on this later), and it was really good for us too see how adaptable chickens are to a variety of spaces, so we're not so worried about everything being perfect. The chicken owners made it clear they're animals, not delicate little pets that need to be pampered. We technically broke ground on the coop this weekend and bought paving stones to serve as a foundation, so over the next few days we hope to have the stones all setup and level in preparation of some weekend building.

I promise more photos soon!

Day 3

They seem to be getting a little more energetic - they're running around a bit more chasing each other. I can't say they look too much bigger, but their wing feathers are coming in and can be seen a bit easier.

Day 2

Just posting photos of the chicks for Day 2 (since I pretended yesterday was Day 1 I'm going to post 2 today to catch up). I'll write a real post tomorrow.

Chickens - Day 1

Technically, it's Day 2, but I was too busy fawning over these little peepers to post anything yesterday. On Tuesday, the Post Office called us first thing in the morning and while Tim headed to pick up the chicks, I had to head to work.

Remember my first post when I said I read obsessively about chickens for weeks? Well, that came back to haunt me a bit as all the contradictory information I read about chicken care come roaring to the forefront of my mind. Examples: the temperature of the brooder, 80-100 degrees was the range of suggestions, whether to give vitamins, whether to offer additional lighting, whether to give medicated feed, etc. etc.

If this was a human birth I would have a nervous breakdown. I mean for several reasons, actually. Anyway, regardless of my non-stop worrying the chicks are doing fine. My advice, pick one resource and go with it. No one needs to read 3 books and several websites to keep chickens - they survive just fine in the wild without a nifty heat lamp, and mama sure as hell doesn't dote on them as much as I do. The chicks have 4 purposes in life at the moment, eating, drinking, sleeping, and pooping. Being cute is a possible 5th, but that's beyond their control and regardless of their actions so I don't think it counts. But they are cute.

They are the tiniest things ever - the photo is deceptive about their size. If you think about an egg and then imagine how small you have to be to fit in one, you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about. I could easily fit 2 of them in the palm of my hand - regardless of my enormous hands. I'm trying not to get too attached to them - as I view them as utilitarian animals more than pets, but it's taking every ounce of will power to avoid this. We'll see how I feel in a few months. I have a fun (though unoriginal) idea to take a photo everyday to chronicle their growth, from my reading they grow amazingly fast, so it should be fun to see. We have yet to name them, but are thinking of female quartets that would be appropriate - Golden Girls, anyone?

I realize I haven't posted any info about the brooder yet, but I'll take photos and describe the setup a bit at some point. Also, coop madness is about to start, so watch out for that.

Baby Chicken Week

The chicken countdown has begun. As of right now, our chickies are hatching at some undisclosed location in some unknown part of the country. I wish I knew more, but the mysterious MyPetChicken isn't giving anything away, they only say they don't personally hatch or send the chicks. Sounds like the Chicken Mafia is on top of it, for real. They've been shipped Express Mail - so we should be getting them Tuesday or Wednesday. We have the brooder set up, have food ready, have planned a half-day at work for when they arrive, so we're all set for the baby chicken stork to make a call (AKA our USPS delivery man).

We ordered 4 chicks, each a different kind because we wanted some diversity. We also specifically bought birds that are cold hardy, since Chicago winters tend to be pretty harsh and we didn't want to deal with frostbite and heating the coop. You can order chicks in three different sex variations: males (cockerel), females (pullets), or straight runs (non-sexed chicks). Obviously, only females lay eggs, so we ordered females only - these cost slightly more than males and straight runs since the demand is higher. If you were raising chickens to eat and lay eggs, you could get a straight run and then only eat the boys - kinda the Valerie Solanas method of chicken keeping.

Here's what we got:

Australorp
Barred Plymouth Rock
Golden Laced Wyandotte
Rhode Island Red

I know some of the photos suck on those links, but you get the idea. Hopefully next time I write I'll have photos of our new arrivals.

Ordering Chicks

Finding an inexpensive supplier of chicks that will ship you a small number can be difficult. Yes, there are a million different hatcheries out there, but it takes time to comb through their websites (which are almost universally poorly designed) to find information about order limits and prices. The vast majority of hatcheries will ship a minimum of 10 or 25 chicks, the reason being that at those numbers keeping them warm is a natural process. Also, for the better part of the last century mostly commercial operations were ordering chicks, so hatcheries designed their business to accommodate them, which means minimums of 10-25 chicks. That leaves most of us out, unfortunately, unless you're organized enough to create a buying club in your area. Different ordering options are popping up slowly, but some take a little digging.

Those hatcheries that ship fewer chicks typically put some kind of heating material in the box and will require Express Shipping - i.e. expensive shipping. MyPetChicken is one place, and this is where we eventually ended up ordering ours, but it's more expensive than I wanted ($30 shipping). This was our last resort, due to some lack of foresight on my part. Apparently, farms order chicks in advance of when they need them (ridiculous, right??). I really wanted to find a local hatchery, so I could support the state economy and eliminate the shipping costs. My first call was to a local feed store, which let me know they get chicks in May - too late for us, we want eggs before there's snow on the ground. Then, I happened upon a state hatchery listing in Backyard Poultry and found Nature's Hatchery in Naperville, IL.

This fit the bill, although their prices for small orders are high - $10 a bird - you can pick them up from the hatchery eliminating the shipping costs. Sounds good right? Gave them a call in February to place an order, talked to a friendly sales person who told me they were sold out till June. Clearly, if you do this as a business you're more "with it" and order more than 3 weeks before you want baby chickens. Ugh.

Chicken Resources

As I said before, I read A LOT about chicken keeping before deciding it was the right choice. Every bit of information about chickening keeping I devoured got (gets) me more and more excited about it. There are tons of websites out there, some are great while others are weird and kinda creepy. Here's a list of some resources I've found helpful (sans the creepy ones), hopefully if you find this post early, it'll save you some time googling:

Books:

Storey's Guide to Keeping Chickens - great general resource

Keep chickens!: tending small flocks in cities, suburbs, and other small places - a little too preachy, but good information

Magazines:

Backyard Poultry

Websites:

Henderson's Chicken Breed Chart - lists chicken breeds with detailed descriptions of each

MyPetChicken - simple but informative articles about chicken care, plus chick ordering

Urban Chickens Network - blog - informative blog from a backyard chicken keeper in CA

Backyard Chickens - go straight for the forums, they're more useful than the other pages, the coop page is fun to look at too

I'm trying to get some of the nitty gritty stuff out of the way - our chicks arrive next week, so I imagine it'll be chick 101 from there on out - oh, and probably some coop talk too, since it's still a muddy patch in our yard.

Why chickens?

My infatuation with chicken keeping began with a causal viewing of Mad City Chickens that a friend of mine convinced me to go to. Before seeing the documentary, I wasn't too interested in chickens, and didn't think it was something I'd want to take on - too much responsibility, too much upkeep, too much poop, too many eggs, etc., etc.

After the movie I became a little bit crazed, and decided my mission for the next few months was convincing my partner that chickens were a good idea and to learn everything about them that I possibly could. I read books, attended workshops, read forums and blogs, planned coops while laying in bed trying to sleep, dreamed about chicken breeds, for several weeks it felt like every moment was chicken related. Fortunately, it was late Fall so I could not run out and buy them, but definitely I wanted to.

Having time to think this through was good - deciding to have chickens purely for the "cool" factor was lame and that's what any spontaneous purchase of chickens would have been. Honestly, I don't like the idea of being part of a sustainability fad, and while I know a lot of people are conscientious of what keeping chickens might mean, a lot aren't. What does it mean to be part of an urban sustainability movement? Who is this for, i.e. who benefits and how can we maximize that benefit? There is a context to the sustainability movement that parallels the issue of urban food access. To be frank, is this some hippy dippy, privileged, thoughtless club that I'd be joining, or can it serve as a model that can address food access issues, reduce food costs, reduce living costs in the long run (after the initial investment) with the byproduct being a more local food system that benefits a large number of people? I don't want a trickle down effect, I want food in the hands of people!

Clearly, people have been keeping chickens for hundreds (thousands?) of years and many cultures continue that practice in urban environments with great success. But it's still important to consider the commercialization of chicken keeping for the urban crowd, and how easily it can be part of the problem, rather then a solution, to our food system issues. My intent for my own chicken keeping was to have access to local/organic eggs (and possibly meat, more on this in later posts) cheaper than $5+ a dozen, decrease my impact on my community, and encourage others to adopt sustainable practices. In addition, I'd have a novel animal (note: not pet) that creates very useful compost and is interesting to keep.

This blog will chronicle my experiences with chicken keeping in Chicago, plain and simple.