Backyard Chicken Keeping for the Complete Novice, Part 2: All About That Coop.

So you've talked it over with your family and you've worked out that you are ready to take the plunge and start your backyard flock. The next step I recommend would be to make your home and yard ready to receive your chicks. I wanted to make sure we had our coop built before we even bought our chicks so that when to time came to transition them to the outdoors, everything would be ready.

Choosing the right kind of coop is no easy task if you have NO IDEA what you are doing.

As I mentioned previously, we had never owned any sort of livestock or spent any time around live chickens. We knew we wanted to get 3 egg laying hens so we knew we wouldn't need a huge barn or anything.

We looked at photos of hundreds of coops and I will fully admit that the one we decided on was based solely on looks.

I wanted a cute hen house with an area for the chickens to roam underneath. I wanted it to be on wheels so we could move it around the yard and contain the birds to one spot of grass at a time. I wanted nesting boxes that were accessible from the outside for easy egg recovery.

I showed my husband pictures of what I wanted and he delivered exactly that. It was perfect. . . in my mind. For the chickens though? Not so much.

Chickens will get bigger than you expect. They need a lot of space to forage, scratch, burrow, play and rest. They are extremely destructive eating machines and will destroy your patch of lawn in about a day or two.

Learn from my mistakes and go bigger than you think you need for your coop. After all, these animals will be providing you with delicious, fresh eggs in a few months and you want to provide them a good quality of life.

Once our chickens were about 4 months old, they were much too big for my cute little coop. Also, it was just not feasible for me to be moving the coop around the yard every day.

We had to go back to the drawing board and design a coop and hen house that was nearly four times larger than the first. This won't be an instructional on coop building, but I can say that we probably spent about $150 on lumber and parts for The Coop 2.0. Coop 2.0 is 7.5' long by 4' wide by 7' tall. There is a 4'x4' hen house with three nesting boxes and 2 roosting polls at different heights inside.

Here is a list of things that I think make a our Coop 2.0 a great coop:

• Tall enough to walk into to clean
• Sand or gravel floor for easy "litter box" style maintenance
• Wide door to the hen house for ease of cleaning
• Linoleum floor in hen house, also for ease of cleaning
• Slanted roof for water run off in rainy weather
• Access hatch to nesting boxes is at a good height to comfortably reach inside
• Nesting boxes are plastic dish bins that can easily be removed and cleaned
• PVC food and watering system 

One other thing I would have done differently would have been to make the roof a little wider and create an awning over the nest box hatch. It gets wet when it rains. We are working on a mod for that at the moment.

Our hens really only go into our coop at night to sleep. They free range in our yard all day, but they can comfortable be contained in the coop to keep them safe from predators if need be.

If predators are a big concern and you are going to be keeping your hens inside a coop for most of the day, I would recommend creating a run area for them to get out and scratch and play a bit. Look into chicken tunnels, sometimes called Chunnels. We have been very lucky so far and have not had any predator worries, so we actually leave the coop door open so the chickens can come and go as they please.

Once you have your coop purchased or built, it will be time to source your chicks, pullets or hens. Look for Part 3, Choosing Your Chicks, coming up soon!

Backyard Chicken Keeping for the Complete Novice, Part 1

Recently, my family and I took up residence in the not so Great State of Texas. We bought a house with a big backyard and immediately began to dream up all its potential. We decided we wanted to create a small, easily managed, suburban mini homestead that would include water reclamation, a vegetable garden, compost and chickens. Of all our best laid plans, the chickens have so far been the most successful.

I guess you could say that I am a city girl, having never grown up around livestock or having any sort of experience dealing with farm type animals. So the idea of starting off on a project like this seemed a little daunting. I took to the interwebs with alacrity, searching out the best breeds for our climate, the best coops, the best feed, etc. There are a plethora of websites available with amazing information on how to start your own backyard flock. There are even great blog articles telling you exactly what you need to get started. That being said, there is no substitute for personal experience and therefore, I see no harm in adding my experience to the collective pool of information.

This will be a multi-part series, wherein I hope to offer advice to the absolute novice. My articles will chronicle the raising of four baby chicks to laying hens in a suburban setting.

Part 1: Assessing Your Situation.

Before you go to the feed store or co-op and fall in love with those adorable little bundles of fluff, you should first find out what your city and county laws are on the keeping of livestock.

Many cities are catching on to the idea of suburban homesteading and are changing bylaws to allow things like small flocks and water reclamation, but you don't want to break any laws so do your research before you even get started.

Then you need to really sit down with your family and talk over the responsibilities and work that will be involved with your flock. Backyard chickens, kept for their egg laying abilities rather than their meat, will become family pets (for some).

We bought our chickens when they were three days old and raised them in our home for the first 8 weeks before moving them outside. You may decide to buy older chickens, called pullets which are closer to being able to lay eggs.

If you buy them as baby chicks, you'll need a warm, safe place away from predators and weather, to rear the chicks until they are strong enough to go outside.

Once outside, they need space to roam around that you don't mind getting destroyed (chickens are very destructive), a safe coop and hen house to protect them from predators, a place to roost, and a comfy nesting box for the eventual eggs you'll receive. So the very first step in a backyard flock is figuring out if you can provide these things.

Backyard chicken keeping requires:

• Patience 
• Flexibility
• Food and water
• A safe chicken coop
• Space for them to roam
• Protection from predators
• Patience and flexibility
• A sense of humor 

Not completely necessary, but very helpful would also be handiness. We have had to build and modify many things along our suburban homestead journey so it helps to know how to operate woodworking tools and equipment.

Once you've figured out if are willing and able to provide all of those things, the next step will be to build or purchase a quality chicken coop. Part 2 will go over my Dos and Don'ts of Chicken Coops.

Have you taken the plunge? What advice do you have for beginners?