Peep, Peep: Part 1 of Our Chicken Keeping Adventure

This look-back is meant to thoroughly introduce you to why we have chickens.  Updates of our chickens' progress can be found on our Facebook and in additional blog posts.  - The American Haggard Housewife

      For about a year now we’ve been toying around with the idea of adding more than just garden space and farm cats around here.  So, without any convincing (of us) needed, we had seven chicks on order for May, which arrived the day after their original “due date” of the fourteenth.  To begin with, we housed them in a makeshift brooder box made out of a friend’s dog crate (that was fun to clean up!), but just four weeks ago they moved into their “Pastured Poultry Palace.”  (I know big words for a chicken coop with a run, but let me live a little here… stop rolling your eyes…sigh…) 

The Free Range Dream

Reason #1 to have a fully enclosed run

      A flock of chickens, pecking happily in the grass on a sunny warm day, gobbling up the weeds and wildflower heads, sneaking tidbits of tasty earthworm, and otherwise happily living out their existence all while providing us with golden-yoked eggs.  There’s no feed bill, only the need to fill a waterer for them to drink from.  It’s paradise… completely unrealistic... and just slightly delusional.   

      The death of our free range dream is a hard one to take, but we knew it would be the best for the chickens, our sanity, and our wallets if we didn’t truly free range the birds.  For one, there were predators we’d have to contend with and lots of them.  If the cooper and red-tailed hawks didn’t swoop down from above during the day, the great horned owl and barred owls that live in our pines would be sure to get them at dusk.  Then there are the skunks and foxes to worry about, willing to claw, climb and tunnel to get to them.    And, of course, the friendly farm cats (not to mention strays) might be just as friendly to the chickens as they are to the songbirds at the bird feeders.  Needless to say, we saw a lot of issues with free range birds, especially since their new home was planned to be located rather close to the road, and decided that putting them in a sturdy building behind sturdy wire would be best, so we weren’t replacing them every two seconds and having to fight other animals for our food. 

The proposed layout when completed

      Their free ranging compromise was our proposed chicken coop and run set up that when completed would continue 40 feet down the hill near where the old farm house once sat, and measure 20 feet wide at its widest.  At present the coop and first permanent run are constructed and utilized as we catch up on some garden weeding and other direly needed projects, and then we'll continue construction on the “tunnel” run and finish siding the coop as well as making a few additions to the building.  When completed, the entire structure - coop and runs - will be divided in two, which will allow us to keep our laying flock separate from our meat birds, while rotating them on "pasture" in an effort to decrease our food bill.  (We can always continue to dream, right?)  While I came up with the rotating design of the runs, my husband was the one stuck making my two-dimensional dreams a three-dimensional reality, designing and building a chicken coop, and figuring out just how we were going to put them where I planned.  In doing this he managed to not only create space for two flocks, but also for a single large one if we ever desired, having a removable wall in the chicken coop, which would turn the structure into one large coop. 

Poultry Prep Is A Pain

And a completely un-glamorous job

      Let no one tell you anything different.  Unless you’re buying a pre-fab chicken coop with pre-fab run, putting them into an already cleared spot of level grass, and you have absolutely no predators in your area to even consider, I repeat, poultry prep is a pain.  It’s a pain in your back, in your shoulders, and in your wallets.  We were forced to try to work around our other equally important projects (as we also happened to be trimming up berry bushes and clearing an upper garden for field corn – which never got done –, planting and weeding the lower garden, working on bricking the edges of our flower beds – which still is not done, although getting closer, nor is the springtime mulching –, and in the middle of canning season at the same time) to ensure that our flock would be well-tended when they arrived. 

      Let’s jump back in time for a moment to explain just why our poultry prep was such a pain for us, and why dozens of hours went into clearing the land, with this and just about every other project we do.  (I’m sure your painful poultry prep story will vary from ours.  I also apologize that you’ll have to contend with the historian in me for a moment, or skip the history lesson in two rather long paragraphs – your choice.)  The area we rent (yes, we have an amazing landlord) was once a very operating and typical Pennsylvania farm containing a pasture, corn crib, Pennsylvania bank barn, and farm house, all which presumably were fed off the old stone-lined well that still exists, albeit a little drier now, near the home of our chicken coop.  The property had been used as a farm at least as early as the American Civil War, and probably the old farm house dated from around that time.  Since the first aerial photographs of the property in 1937, there has been a lot of rearranging of the farm and addition of outbuildings, and the progression of pasture to farmland to lawn, not-to-mention the planting of trees. 

A sketch of what was and is still around the farm.

      The most drastic change occurred with the removal of the old farm house around 1990 when the rancher we live in was built.  The corn crib, being no longer in use, was taken down, but its foundation remained and is now used as our patio.  The upper and lower gardens, which took place of the old 1937 pasture, became overgrown and a sand mound was added in the new septic system in the same area.  A huge wind break of pine trees was added across the whole back of the property, separating the house from the fields.  The old chicken house was turned into a shed, and the Pennsylvania bank barn, complete with its cedar shingles on the inside roof, turned into straw bale storage.  The land where the old farm house once sat, with old well pump still intact, was overrun with maple, mulberry and ailanthus trees surrounded by bits and pieces of the original landscaping like autumn olive, osage orange trees, poppies, bulb flowers, berry bushes, and multiflora rose bushes.  And, THAT is where our pain begun, the very invasive ailanthus, multiflora rose and poison ivy, sitting in the way of our new chicken coop on steroids. 

So we cleared by hand (because for some reason we don’t own a chain saw) removing the ailanthus trees by the armful and hauling their remains to the old shale pit in the middle of the landlord's farm field in my step grandfather's former pickup truck (and our new-to-us truck thanks to him desiring a new one).

And cleared… our piles growing all the higher as we raced against the clock to haul everything off to the old shale pit in two weeks time (i.e. once the winter rye was harvested in the fields, but before our pickup truck’s tires could destroy the newly planted soybean crop).  P.S. – Sorry for the weird dots on the photograph by the trees, it’s actually a cat paw smudge on the lens I didn’t notice until after the photos were taken.  My guess is one of the cats wasn't fond of their closeup.  

  

Then we borrowed a chainsaw because let’s face it, our backs were getting quite tired by this point, and cut down the remaining junk trees.  We left the mulberry trees, osage orange trees and any maples we could find intact in the area to offer a little shade, if not for the chickens, for us, and to offer a harvestable crop for the chickens to eat.  We also left intact the field of poppies and two large autumn olive bushes that were part of the original landscaping around the old farmhouse.

And then we brought in the heavy equipment (a la landlord) to rid us of those awful ailanthus stumps, which was a long project to say the least.  Finally, we had a cleared area for the chicken coop, which just happened to luckily be much larger than the size we originally needed (and seemingly pre-tilled from the stump removal process).  And, with some added salvaged landscaping (i.e. bulb flowers, berry bushes and autumn olive saved from the area prior to the heavy equipment coming in) it was beginning to look like “home” for the chickens!  (Although weeks later in the very potholed landscape some "missed" ailanthus stumps were starting to re-sprout and the grass was growing rampant as the lawnmower could not yet make it into the area.  After a bit of precarious balancing of my daring husband with the riding lawnmower around the disappearing holes that could dislodge a lawnmower tire in a heartbeat, bits and pieces of the section were finally moved for the first time in August.)  

Watch for Part 2 in the coming months to continue the chicken tale, and see our first experience with raising baby chicks.  

NOW AVAILABLE!  Cluck, Cluck: Part 2 of Our Chicken Keeping Adventure