In the Beginning

I am currently in the process of setting up a coop and acquiring a (small!) flock of backyard chickens, and since it already promises to be an adventure like so many of my previous chicken experiences have been, I thought it would be fun to write a blog about it.

Although backyard chickens are now suburban chic, they wouldn’t necessarily seem like something I should want, so some background is in order.

While I now live in rural north-central Ohio in an agricultural area--soybeans to the north, corn to the east, cattle and sheep down the road, I grew up in a heavily forested suburban area. My only exposure to chickens prior to college were the two banties that lived next door for a summer. They were small and white, and at least one of them was a rooster because I remember it crowing all the time. I was much less enchanted with them than I was with the Pekin ducks that preceded them.

I went to Hiram College in the 1980’s near the end of the heyday of its famous field biology station, the brainchild of the late “Prof” James Barrow. The large, forested property was originally a farm, with many of the original buildings retrofitted to keep animals. The options of animals to study were nearly endless--from red foxes and coyotes to squirrel monkeys to crested screamers and emus. I was initially disappointed to be assigned to work in the chicken building, but it ultimately turned out to be a good fit. I grew to enjoy their quirky personalities and mostly-programmed behaviors and also began to appreciate their incredible variety and genetic plasticity--second only to that of dogs.

The chickens seemed to be a special love of Prof’s and he had amassed quite a collection. I learned about the various breeds, fed and watered them every day before classes while school was in session, cleaned their pens on the weekends, and worked on a research project of my own involving rumpless (really!) bantams.

So all through my college years and beyond, I had it in the back of my mind that someday when I was settled, I’d get chickens of my own. The last time I saw Prof in 1991, while I was still living in an apartment, he told me he had chickens for me when I was ready. Fast forward to 1996, and I finally got a house in the country. The chickens have been put off for a long time. There is no infrastructure here, and I had visions of getting a large flock of bantams. I couldn’t afford a big shed and am not handy enough to envision building one from scratch.

Over the years, I have seen chickens roaming around the neighborhood and admired them at fairs. I’d think for awhile about getting some, and then put the thought away. The tipping point finally came last month when our “sustainable operations” newsletter at work was sent out. It had a big article about how backyard chickens are now all the rage with lots of links to websites offering pre-fab coops. I thought, “Wow, now I can really do it.” and also “If I don’t do it now, I probably never will.” So I finally made up my mind. I also modified my original idea of a large bantam flock to three large dual-purpose hens while I see how it all works out.

Another issue, which I imagine will be my biggest problem, is that I have allowed my property to revert to a more natural, wild state with the intention of attracting wildlife. It worked and they are here, even more so this year with the fields across the road coming out of the conservation reserve program and going to soybeans. If it eats chickens, I have seen or heard it here. Coyotes? I heard them howling right behind my house last month. Red and gray foxes? I’ve seen them both in the yard. Ditto weasels, raccoons, possums, red-tailed (chicken) hawks, great-horned owls, the neighbor’s pit bull, and my resident skunks. Philosophically, I believe the place belongs to them (except for the pit bull)--I have welcomed them after all, so I do not envision waiting in the chicken yard at night and shooting coyotes. So my answer is to construct the chicken facilities with security in mind.

I searched the web for coop options and had nearly settled on a “hen hoop,” a sort of mobile Quanset hut with attached pen that can be moved around the yard. The idea is still attractive, especially since most of my yard trees are ash and will need to come down when they succumb to the emerald ash borer, probably within the next 5 years. A movable coop would be handy to allow the tree removal equipment room to maneuver. But the hoops are breathtakingly expensive for the square footage you get, and a short journey up the road resulted in a larger shed-type Amish-built coop for a third less money.

So now the Chicken Castle is here (embarrassingly large for the three hens it will hold) and the next step is to construct a small predator-proof run--the “inner compound” where the hens can stay if I will not be home in time to close up the coop by dark. My boyfriend Steve has designed this and we started putting it together last night. I plan to put up an “outer perimeter” of electric poultry netting powered by a solar charger. This, for now, is the best I can do.