by Debbie Bosworth of Dandelion House
Howdy everyone! I’m Deb, the new chick in the hen house here at Community Chickens. It’s great to meet you and I look forward to getting to know more fellow chicken keepers through this forum!
To say that backyard chicken keeping is in its hay- day is an understatement. It seems as if today’s backyard chicken keeper will do just about anything to get in on having hens of their own. Apartment dwellers, city folk and suburbanites alike are in the game and there is no end to the creative ways there are to house chickens. Where was pinterest when we started our chicken keeping adventures eight years ago? Who knows what we might have ended up with? We might have gone with a hollowed out Volkswagen or a vintage trailer for a coop. Instead, we built one from scratch using scrap lumber, an antique window and some barn red stain.
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This is the story about how The Little Red Hen House came to be. It all began eight years ago with an innocent visit to a friends home who had just received a box of adorable fuzzy little cheeping, chirping puff balls from the post office. Our daughter who was 8 years old at the time fell in love with them on the spot and that’s all I heard about for weeks afterwards. As a homeschooling mom I just had to figure out a way we could have some too! After all, it would be a great learning experience for the kids and thoughts of farm fresh eggs right from our backyard soon began to dance in my head. After loads of searching online for chicken breeds, chicken coops, chicken feed, and town restrictions on keeping backyard chickens plus a few trips to the local library for more information we were finally ready to order or first flock. At the recommendation of friends, we ordered a mixed variety of breeds ( hearty to long New England winters) from our local feed store.
Then the ” real ” planning began! Large cardboard box. CHECK! Pine Shavings. CHECK! Food and Water containers. CHECK! Heat lamp. CHECK! Thermometer. CHECK! Chicks. CHECK!
Once they arrived and we saw how fast they grew it was time to get serious about ” real housing” for our hens. My husband and I love to re-cycle and re-purpose when ever possible and after looking at the steep prices at fully constructed coops we decided to get creative with a design of our own based loosely on some plans we found online. Since we are pickers buy nature we went shopping in our shed for some scrap wood and discovered we had a large 6 over 8 antique window that ended up being perfect for providing passive solar warmth for the girls during the colder winter months.
We knew it had to be good sized to house 13 full grown hens comfortably. The finished size is 5′ by 6′ with 4 nesting boxes on the rear and a separate box for storing buckets, food, oyster shells and other chicken keeping sundries. The lid lifts up for easy access to eggs and nudging the occasional broody hen off a clutch of eggs when necessary. You might call it a Salt Box Design which is a type of architecture found in New England.
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Golden Laced Wyandotte |
The end wall of the coop is exposed to the outside of the run and doesn’t open for obvious safety reasons. A matching door on the inside of the coop provides plenty of space to get inside for regular cleaning with two roosting bars that are fixed diagonally across the back wall of the coop.The floor of the coop is a scrap piece of vinyl flooring over plywood.
Fast forward eight years and a few more springs chicks added along the way and it’s safe to say our lesson in backyard chicken keeping has stuck! We’ve learned a lot along the way about over all hen keeping but it’s the girls that have taught us the most. They are smart, intuitive and are a natural addition to any family living in suburbia who wishes to practice sustainability on a small scale. We have a rather large run attached to the hen house. It measures roughly 12 x 75 feet long. Having this much area for a run creates a natural composting area. We toss kitchen scraps and yard waste in the run, the girls do their thing and come spring time we shovel out the top layer of the run into the wheelbarrow and top off our established gardens with it giving the plants a nice jump start on a new season of growth and flower production. Chickens are a farm-girls best friend!
Join me next time when I’ll share my tips on designing a garden for your hen house you AND your girls will love!
Thanks for reading,
Deb
PS.
Breeds we have found to be hearty in the North East through personal experience are: Plymouth Barred Rock, Buff Orptington, Rhode Island Red, Aracauna, Golden/Silver Laced Wyanodotte.
* If you are also a New England chicken keeper please share you favorite breed in the comments section below and tell us a little about your hen house too!
11 Comments
Hi Ladies I am located in Castle Rock, CO and we have had some very cold temps. My Coop gives my Girls the option of the nesting boxes like yours which are basically mounted on the side of the coop. The other side is an enclosed nesting box and two plastic tubs I placed on top of each other (I cut a hole in the lid to allow the chix in and to give the box a lip so the bedding/eggs do not fall out. I put wood shavings on the side that hangs out and hay in the boxes on the other side. They have chosen the hay side without fail ever since. They will sleep and poop in the shaving side but only lay eggs on the hay side and they do not poop on the hay at all. I’m wondering if they associate the shavings with “bedding” since that is what I used when they were chicks? Come Spring I will switch the shavings and hay to see if it is the hay or the internal “box” they prefer. I’ll let you know . . .
I love Australorps, they were my first chickens. Beautiful to look at, mellow in behaviour and noise, and incredible layers of XL brown eggs. I now have 5 different breeds at any one time, but there is always a spot in my heart for ‘lorps.
BTW, I’ve been wondering about all these coops with the nest boxes hanging off the back. Does it cause the eggs to freeze faster? I put boxes inside my coop because I was worried about that, tho it does look easier to collect from.
Hello Tamidon, Thank you for sharing your favorite chicken breed with us… It’s interesting to me how we are all drawn to different breeds! In regards to eggs freezing faster with the exterior mounted nesting boxes. This week and last we have had temps in the single digits. The eggs I have collected on those days weren’t frozen solid, but I did use a few I had just brought in one morning for scrambled eggs and they seemed to be fine, even though they weren’t completely frozen. You’ve inspired me to put a thermometer in the hen house and in the nesting boxes to see how cold it actually gets in there! I will say the exterior nesting boxes makes for easy collecting. I do enjoy that! Thanks so much for reading 🙂 Deb
Sweet house and I just happen to have a nice window here from my neighbor who got new one. I’m going to rebuild my house this spring, right now it’s from pallets, which are great, but gonna do design change and you just hit it on the head for me w/ the window idea. I’m in MT. and they would have great solar heat in winter and I’d put up a cover over the window in summer to keep heat out (like a porch cover/roof)
Hi Linda! I agree with you, MT would also be a great place for passive solar, I didn’t mention that ours has a slight overhang above the window which keeps the window shaded during the high heat summer months here in New England. Maybe a similar idea would work in your region as well? I am a native Nevadan and I know how hot western summers can be. Shade is a necessity! 🙂 Thank you for reading… 🙂
Very nice setup….I’m certain your girls love it!
Thank you Barry, So far, they seem to be very comfy in their little red hen house! I still worry about them in this very cold weather, but they surprise me and keep clucking along despite it! Thanks for reading 🙂 Deb
I love your coop, it’s my favorite color too! 🙂 Welcome! I look forward to hearing more about your chickens.
Thank you Lori! The girls picked out the color… LOL!
Have a great day! Deb
Welcome to Community Chickens! I am so happy to see you blogging for this amazing community of fellow chickens friends.
Thank you Melissa! It’s wonderful to be here and I’m looking so forward to getting to know everyone better! Deb