Time for Chickens

I hesitated to make this my first post as it seemed a bit cliche given the name of the blog. So, after much deliberation on my part, i have decided to go ahead with the post regardless.

I have always wanted to live on a farm, and now that we have the land, I have convinced my husband that we should have chickens (for eggs not meat). Well, the time of year has come that we need to get the chicks and we have no house for them. In two weeks we will have half a dozen Rhode Island Red pullets at our house and hopefully by then have a place to keep them.

I have been struggling for the last several months with how to design and build a chicken coop that compliments the style of our home. Since our house is non-traditional, I think it is only appropriate that the coop mirror that and be out of the ordinary as well, at the same time I really do not want it to push my neighbors over the edge (they have been so accepting of us to this point).

These are a couple of great resources that I found for keeping chickens : The Country Chicken , Operation Coop Coup

The chicken coop with an enclosed 'play' area:

A bit out of the box:







This just may be taking things a bit too far. This coop has a green roof:



photo by mipsy6



I am loving just about everything about this coop by by hen power; it is made of easy to use materials, funky and functional all at the same time! how cool!





...And in a pinch we could always go this direction temporarily:




Hopefully by the end of the weekend, I will have a design to post.