Unlike my adventure in beekeeping, which had been a long-time idea that festered for years, keeping chickens was absolutely not on my radar. At all. If you had asked me 5 years ago, or even 1 year ago, if I would soon have a chicken coop in my backyard, I’d say you were crazy. No way. Nope. That’s not ever going to happen.

So… anyway… we are building a chicken coop in the backyard.

I mean, ok, it’s not totally out of thin air. While I wasn’t exactly thinking about chickens in MY backyard, I have secretly envied other people that have farmland and all the farm things, and of course, those cute little fluffy butt egg giving birds. But we’re in a suburban neighborhood, we probably can’t even have chickens.

But we do have a whole side of the yard that is mostly unused. It’s the “bee side” of the yard. Straight out the back door is the deck and pool, to the left is the garden area, fire pit, tool shed, and boat parking. To the right, is the largely unused side. The beehives are over there and beyond that is a good sized area that is neglected. I left it to grow weeds for the bees. That was fine. Spanish Needle, Florida Betony and Dandelion are some of bees favorite things, and we don’t have any doors or windows on that side of the house. So there wasn’t much point other than just letting it grow wild and weedy for the bees. It’s behind a privacy fence and isn’t an eyesore to anyone. But, it’s also a haven for bugs. Annoying bitey bugs. I have beehives, so we can’t, or choose not to, use any pesticides. But all the annoying bitey bugs are annoying and bitey and while I try to be all-crunchy-granola-one-with-nature, I do not particularly love the bitey things. And neither do the dogs. So we have recently been discussing bee-friendly pesticide solutions.

Then our friend Phoenix says “you should build a chicken coop. This space is perfect for chickens.” (She’s kinda a pro in keeping chickens, having kept chickens herself and having designed and built coops.) And she says things like “they’re so much fun” and “fresh farm eggs” and “they will eat allll the bugs”.

Hahaha! NO……..Well. Wait. Really? They’ll eat the bugs and give us eggs and they’re cute and funny and… yeah we start really thinking about this. And I start reading about keeping backyard chickens. And checking city and county ordinances. And it turns out, we actually can keep chickens in our backyard.

It took no time to convince the husband, I think he was convinced at the words “farm fresh eggs”, and now we’re building a coop on the bee side of the yard which will soon become the birds & the bees side of the yard because apparently I needed yet another hobby. Those of you who know me are probably rolling your eyes, right? But.. y’all please hear me out. Chick-ens!!

So it’s happening. The first job was to clear out all the weeds, and level the area. I’m so sorry little bees, but I will replace the weeds with other things you will love, I promise. Pierre and our friend Phoenix got to work almost immediately. They did the manual labor, I cooked and fed them them and made chocolate chip cookies. I’m a good cook and the cookies were awesome. It was fair.

Big, fat, soft and chewy with milk chocolate AND semi-sweet chips!

Here’s the space after a weekend of work.

Phoenix has designed the run and coop. It will include the chicken coop, a large partially covered run, and a separate area to hold supplies as well as room to quarantine a bird if needed, or raise chicks, as well as some automatic features. The entire area will be approximately 800 or so sq ft, and large enough to comfortably house 20 birds, and will be fully enclosed in hardware cloth and chicken wire. The run area will be spacious, with room for me to plant things inside (for the hens to enjoy and destroy), and a 3-foot perimeter around the outside. Two doors, one into the access room, and another from the access room into the run.

We hope to have it built in the next few weekends, then we’ll go pick up some birds. The plan is to start with a few laying hens to get our feet wet, probably some Rhode Island Reds, Sex Links, Orpingtons, etc. But eventually I am going to have at least a couple Silkies because omg they’re like super fluffy muppet chickens. We will gradually increase the flock to 10, and will not have any roosters. I have been reading all the chicken things and doing my homework.

Rough layout. The front square is the main access room, and storage for feed and tools. Behind that is the actual coop and roosting area.

Anti-predator measures. I don’t think we have many predators in the area, but if anything is going to lure them to our yard, it’s going to be some fat fluffy hens.

We’ve also let the neighbors know. They’re cool, we get along well with our neighbors, so I don’t anticipate any disputes. They don’t mind the bees, so hopefully they won’t mind the chickens either. I don’t know if they’re especially thrilled about chickens, or if they just think we’re weird. But maybe their first half dozen of farm fresh eggs will help convince them that we’re not crazy weirdos next door. Or maybe it’ll solidify it. Whatever. Apparently, we actually are kinda crazy. 🐓

Project: Chicken Coop