Backyard Chickens

When I first built my coop, I figured 32sqft would be enough space for a chicken run. I imagined some of our six hens would be inside, while others would be outside. Turns out, that wasn’t the case because the chickens like follow each other. When one goes out, they all go out. I quickly found myself needing a bigger run, especially when the chickens reached full size. I designed and built my chicken coop on my own, based on a rough sketch I drew on a piece of paper….
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So we’re a little over one year into our chicken experiment and I can honestly say, it’s been a lot of fun! It’s not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, nor as messy. As we gain experience, we learn what to be concerned about, and what’s normal. For example, our molting chickens stopped laying eggs about 2 weeks ago. I know they are molting, because it looked like a few feather pillows exploded in our backyard and inside the coop. Molting is the process whereby a chicken…
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Algae is a chlorophyll-containing, mainly aquatic eukaryotic organism, or more commonly referred to as the green stuff one finds in stagnant water. You can grow this stuff if you let water sit for awhile, especially if it’s warm outside and the water has sunlight shining on it. But most people don’t like it, and neither do our chickens. I’ve grown tired of cleaning out the water bucket every week, so I needed to stop the algae from growing when the chicken water sits for a few days. Fortunately, there are…
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Chickens aren’t too particular when it comes to their bedding. In reality, it’s probably you who is more particular than the chickens because you are the one that has to clean up after them. However, there are some health concerns that need to be addressed, because the chickens don’t always know what is best for them. The bedding on the floor of the coop serves a few purposes; provide comfort to the chickens, make it somewhat easier for you to clean up the poop (unless you want to scrape the…
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Backyard chicken raising has become quite popular over the last few years, and I don’t think there is any one reason, but rather a few good reasons why. The reasons we did it are twofold; fresh healthy eggs and for the fun of it! First of all, eggs are not bad for you. They are very good for you because they are packed with lots of nutritional stuff. A few decades back, a war on eggs was waged because they were perceived as having too much cholesterol. Since then, study…
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After months of planning and thoughtful research, I designed and built my own chicken coop from scratch. I could have bought one of the prefab kits online, but after looking them over and reading reviews, they simply wouldn’t withstand the weather on the Colorado plains. I needed something a lot more sturdy and heavy so it wouldn’t blow away in the 40 mph winds we are frequently subjected to out east. A lot of thought went into the design. I had to take many things into consideration such as location,…
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