As the first flowers of spring being to bloom in my gardens, a new step toward being more self-sufficient is brooding in my basement:

That’s right. After years of wishing, and wanting for chickens, my wife an I finally took the plunge and picked up 8 baby chicks from our local Tractor Supply! We opted for the sexed chickens since we’d rather not have to deal with any roosters. That being said, we got 2 Amberlinks, 2 ISA Browns, and 4 Barred Rocks. After doing some more research on these breeds, it seems as though we’ve got some calm, quiet, family-friendly birds with a propensity for laying lots of eggs. In other words – we won the chicken-breed lottery with what they had available.

At the moment, I have them set up in our storage room in my old rabbit hutch. The heat lamp with the red bulb is new, as are the feeder and water dispenser. But all in all it was a pretty minimal investment into this setup since I already had the hutch. Now I know they’ll outgrow this little cage pretty quickly, but I have plans to start building them a proper hen house and run area down by my shed. I’ve been looking for a good spot to put it and toying with layout plans in my head for years now, but these little chicks have definitely moved this project from mere daydreams to top-priority!

This is the spot that I finally decided on. Now I know it might be hard to see the stakes I have in the ground marking the corners, but the dimension of this hen-house are going to be 8′ x 10′. I know this seems excessive for a flock of 8 birds, but if all goes well with this first round, we may expand the flock in subsequent years, and it is of course much easier to build something too large, than it is to make an existing structure bigger later on. As my Dad always said, “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth over-doing.” Also, a coop this size should allow me to lock them inside if we have a particularly cold or nasty winter – which I think we are due for in the next couple years.

Now, the reasoning for this sport: it’s far enough away from my house (and my neighbors house) so any chicken smell shouldn’t be an issue. Although I do plan to try and keep their living space as clean as I can given my busy schedule. This spot also gets ample shade in the summer-time, which is important in a place that routinely gets pretty hot and pretty muggy by June/July and stays that way until Mid-September. And lastly, it’s in good proximity to my big veggie garden and compost area (out of frame to the left). Why haul chicken poop further than you have to, right?

I might have a lot of work ahead of me with building the coop, and keeping these little guys happy and healthy, but it’s a very exciting time! I’m sure all the work and worry will be well worth it once I get everything established and we can start eating eggs my own girls have laid for us.

Until next time, Happy Brooding!