More planning for chickens

Wyandotte hen

For some reason this blog has been getting a lot of traffic from Germany, Latvia & Russia lately.  Go figure.  Assuming there are actual readers on the ends of those hits and not just search bots, I'd like to say a big thank you, danke, paldies and спасибо for reading.  Hopefully nothing is lost in translation.



Oldest has now caught youngest's fevered excitement about raising a backyard flock of egg-layers and wants in on the action.  So in addition to the 40ish Cornish Rock Cross we'll be ordering from Jenks Hatchery, I think the boys have argued, bargained and narrowed down their hen choices to Buff Orpington, Wyandotte & Leghorn.  Their choices are based solely on looks and how friendly the birds are reputed to be ~ I, on the other hand, steered them to the more prolific egg layers and "nicer" chickens.  We don't want any fights in the hen house.  We're going to get four hens, probably from the local feed store or maybe from a local-ish farmer.  I'm stalking Craigslist for possibilities.


Speaking of hen houses, if we were rolling in money, I'd purchase this set-up from Williams-Sonoma.  Nice, huh?  Plus cedar does well in our drippy Pacific NW weather.  But seeing as we don't have an extra $1500 lying around for a chicken coop, we're thinking of building a knock-off version of this, which in all honesty will be no where near as lovely but hopefully will keep our future hens happy.  We'll see.  I like the compactness and lightness of this coop which will make for easy moving about the yard... though since we'll be building it out of reclaimed wood and seeing how heavy the chicken tractor turned out, this maybe be a debatable point.  I'll keep you updated as we build.