Sold Chickens

I sold six of my young hens today. Sad to see them go, but I had to get them homes for the winter. I hand raised them this spring from my stock. They were so friendly. Now I am down to my Delawares. I have 8 of them and one rooster.

Moving to a new place

Our chickens have grown and they seem to be enjoying life. I caught them all trying to get a drink of water at the same time.

But just when you think your settled, life changes. You move.
Now moving three coops and 20 chickens has it draw backs, but we just couldn't resist the new place.





We bought a home in Mendon Utah. We fell in love. Here is a picture of our Old new home. I think it is a nice place to raise chickens. It came with an old coop and run. As I try to get things in order the hens are enjoying the old coop.

I think is has a little class of days gone by. Of course before I would let a chicken enter I had my husband spray it very well to evict all the spiders and hornets. After a through cleaning I rather like its simplicity.

Getting Chickens

After a couple of years with out chickens I decided it was time to take the plunge. Our new home is in a small Utah town and we are allowed to have animals, roosters included as long as they don't violate the noise ordnance. I am not sure if roosters can get that loud.


Now what comes first the Chicken or the coop? From my past adventure it is the coop. I had a hard time motivating myself to make another coop. My husband was too busy with work so one day I was browsing the classifieds in the poultry section, yes we have a poultry section, and I found a coop. It was new and the owners were moving and couldn't take it with them. I called that day and soon I had my coop. Now this coop was heavy and with the help of all my sons we loaded it and brought it home.

We used the old run we had not given away and attached it with a ramp. My son gave me these hens which are in their second season of laying. I get nice brown eggs. I have 4 red sex links, 2 Road Island reds and two buff Orpington's. They settled in nicely.



Having the chickens motivated me to get busy building a couple of coops. I had decided to raise two breeds, Delawares and New Hampshire's. These two breeds are heritage birds and were once used in the poultry industry back in the 1940's before the hybrids became popular.

So I built a small coop for the roosters and another big coop for the hens. My husband calls them the chicken concentration camp. But I like to refer to them as my chicken condos.


Here are the two coops I built with runs. They are not as pretty but I did try to keep with the color scheme. My roosters are in the small middle coop and the young pullets are in the far end coop. My roosters will only get to visit the hens when I plan to hatch in the spring. But they get to socialize with both pens of hens on either side through the wire until then.

How time flies

It is amazing that I have not gotten back to this blog till now. As the story continues. I started getting eggs from my first flock about Nov. when they were 5 to 6 months old. I was so excited. City girl gets eggs. What I really enjoyed about those first chickens was how much they relaxed me. After a hard days work, I would go out to feed the girls and just watch them. Slowly I could feel the tension melting away. I would watch them for hours. Something about being responsible for a chicken who is basically on the bottom of the food chain, gives you a since of accomplishment. Soon we were over run with eggs. A family of 6 can not possibly eat 9 to 10 eggs a day. But we soon learned how to cook eggs 101 different ways. That first flock lived with me for 4 seasons and were laying strong. When we moved, we gave our chickens to our son in the country. He was not as diligent at I at keeping them safe and one by one the disappeared into the night never to be found again.

The story continues

Well to continue the story, I bought 25 chickens from Meyer hatchery. I chose Barred Rock as they were good for our cold winters. In June, 26 fluffy chickens arrived at the post office. You have to order them in lots of 25 and they throw one in for good measure. I was called at 6 am to pick them up. I had my brooder ready in the basement and they were watered and fed upon arrival. I read that some would die and not to be concerned. They took off and grew and grew, and grew. four weeks later it was time to get them in the chicken coop. So far I had lost none. This may have been beginners luck. But here are the girls in their coop all grown up. You may wonder what I did with the extra chickens? About eleven were boys, and I only needed 10. Now if your a pet chicken lover you may stop reading now. Yes we put them in the freezer. Now I don't enjoy plucking chickens and I might think of raising meat birds if I could get around the plucking part. Hum. I will have to think on that. 6 months after they arrived, we got our first eggs. We had eggs from these girls for the next four years.

How it began

I guess it started out about 8 years ago. My experiment with chickens. It began when I visited a neighbor and low and behold she had a hen house in her back yard. Now that is not too unusual except we lived in a nice suburban neighborhood, no cows or horses anywhere in sight. It did get my mind rolling and after a lot of research and a book on how to build chicken coops, I was on my way. I ordered "The Poultry House Construction by Michael Roberts" online. Some how I was able to get my husband on board and we built our first chicken coop together. It took us three Saturdays and $200.00. After the coop was finished we needed to order our chickens. I highly recommend you not order chickens until you have a place to house them. It is amazing how fast they grow.