Sorting Out the Flock

By the end of the school year we knew we had to move those chickens out. They were big pullets now. The crowing of the two Araucana "hens" was excruciating from the bedroom next door at 5:00 a.m. I scrambled to get the yard ready for our new flock and we found a breeder who would take the young roosters in.

Every weekend was another project. The 30x30 side yard of our old foursquare house made a perfect chicken yard. But it was overgrown and full of debris from past projects. I cleared the land, rebuilt the sagging fence and completed a small storage building along the property line.

Then the fun stuff got underway. I found lots of good advice online regarding urban coops for small flocks and I had some scrap lumber left over from other projects. A neighbor's losses to raccoons made us feel that we needed a Fort Knox approach to the chicken run. I built a serious covered run and we used makeshift boxes for housing while I prepared to build the coop itself.

We had chickens in the yard! We were urban chicken farmers at last.