A Place of Their Own

Posted on October 20, 2008 by jkmcintyre


It is time. Inspired by Michael Pollan’s ‘Education of an Amateur Builder’, as well as the Money Pit experience of new home ownership, we are building our own chicken coop. After MUCH deliberation, we decided on 20 sqft (3.5’x5.5’ ) rising 4’ to 5’, accommodating 3 nest boxes and 3 roosts of various heights to keep our wee flock entertained during the long wet of the Pacific Northwest. The run will follow as they don’t yet have enough feathers to hang out in the chilly outdoors.

Designing and building this structure is far harder than I imagined. First there were the requirements: 3-6sqft/bird, nest boxes 12x12x14”, roosts no less than 2’ off ground 12” apart and 18” from wall and ceiling, 1sqft light/10sqft of space, etc. Materials? Cost?

Via Craigslist and the West Seattle blog, we acquired some free materials, but we still had to make a $$ trip to Home Depot for lumber and a sheet of plywood.

And finally, how to bloody well construct the thing? I decided to frame the coop like you would a house because it was something I could understand. But I’ve never actually done this, so when it came down to details I wondered things like: How do you attach studs to the bottom and top plates? What happens at corners? How do you join walls? How do you join rafters to the top plate? What are my options for putting in doors? Windows?

Still-fraught with questions, we purchased our lumber and started construction. I’d like to say it went smoothly. The fact that after two days we’re not finished tells you it hasn’t. But we are learning a ton and beginning to have our own ideas about how to proceed with the finicky details.



This morning it is raining. Hard. We ran outside with plastic to cover things up and wait for a drier day to continue. Meanwhile the girl-lets continue to grow and now regularly sit up on their condo roof with eyes towards jumping down and pooping all over our living room…

Posted in baby chickens, chicken coop / run, DIY | 1 Comment

3 little chickens 3 weeks old

Posted on October 17, 2008 by jkmcintyre


The chickens are 3.5 weeks old, I figure. Their food and water, continually moved up to back height, now sit 4” above the floor. We had to raise the walls of their condo box by taping up the flaps, but even then Rocky has grown tall and strong enough to jump up to the edge. The other night while we watched a movie she jumped up and roosted there, tucking her little head under her wing.


They are changing so fast! Beautiful little feathers are growing awkwardly on their shoulders, backs, and chests. Greta has a funny Victorian collar, and two rows of shiny black feathers run down Aussie’s otherwise fuzzy yellow chest. Rocky’s little comb continues to worry us.

They seem to like us. They jump up onto our hands when invited. Rocky goes from there to the box edge, or occasionally someone’s head (sorry Liz), but Greta and Aussie are happy to be petted. Greta will sit right down and chirp. Aussie is a little more inquisitive. When Walter dropped by last weekend, she walked right up onto his shoulder – so cute!


The cat Loca finally became interested in the chicks. Previously, even when we had them out of the box for petting, she couldn’t care less – just lolled on the couch crying for attention as per usual. But last weekend Rocky was perching on the edge of the box, and I was sitting on the couch admiring her when Loca walked in the room. Meowed into the room, for those who know her. Loca hopped onto the couch and headed for my lap. Halfway there she noticed the chicken. I mean, the way a predator does – with her whole body. After I put the chicken back in the box Loca made quite a show of sniffing the edge of the box where Rocky had perched. Not good. Eventually the chickens will be big enough for it to be a fair contest, but ‘til then we’ll have to watch out.

I continue to struggle with designing an inexpensive, practical, pleasing coop and run for them outdoors. We are having to change their bedding every day and it smells a bit like a chicken coop in there, what with the heat lamp and all. We could move them out to the garage, but I’m hoping to build the coop over the weekend.

Meanwhile it rains. And when it doesn’t I’m outside putting down cardboard and dirt to rot our sod and turn our front yard into garden beds. Occasionally I work at analyzing video for my dissertation!

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Little Baby Chickens, two weeks old, how do you like the world so far?

Posted on October 6, 2008 by jkmcintyre


Three little chickens all in a row,
One jumps up, and then they all go!

This is so much fun. They are 2-weeks old now and growing like gang-busters. Still in the den, but we’ve set them up in a bigger box. The littlest one had been trying to fly but it was the biggest one who started jumping up onto the ‘water tower’, so I ran a piece of bamboo through the box to see if they’d roost on it and they did!

Other firsts this week: dust-bathing! When my sprinkling of diatomaceous earth resulted in a pile of the powder, instinct triggered the two biggest chicks to roll around in it flapping their wings. This was very cute for a little while, but when they still weren’t getting up after 20 min we began to freak out that they might be having an acute toxic reaction to it! Scott was calling hotlines and scanning the internet (man of action) while I just watched them, then took them out of the box and held them. Eventually they stood up and were fine, and we could laugh about our nascent experience of feeling like anxious parents!

We also fed them bugs for the first time. We were outside cleaning up plant clippings from the walkway which revealed a handful of worms et al. I picked them up, dropped them in the chicken box and we stood back to watch. The chickies were very observant for a moment. Our feather-faced Ameraucana approached the shell-backed pillbug and experimental pecked at it. It jolted away from her and she ran shrieking, literally, like a little girl! It was hilarious. Our smart little Australorp caught on first and raced around the box with little prizes for a minute before the others joined in. Within 5 minutes, they had successfully devoured their first real meal. We are proud of their instincts!

The little girls will walk onto our hands now and sit down. They are all three growing tail feathers. Rocky’s rapidly emerging comb is worrying me that she’s a cocky little ‘girl’ instead of a Rockette. Time will tell. They still freak out when you make sudden moves or loud noises, like last night when Scott sneezed – but, hey – they’re chickens!

Posted in baby chickens, bugs | 5 Comments

Birds of a Feather

Posted on October 2, 2008 by jkmcintyre

We did it! We got chickens!! They are very small, very cute, and intermittently chirpy (when they are not falling asleep on each other). Scott found a chicken grower on Craigslist (Jean) who was producing chicks this month. On our way back from mountain biking in Winthrop this weekend we stopped by her farm in Carnation, WA, and brought home three little fluff balls, deciding not to wait until spring to start our wee flock.

They have large feet and little beaks, long necks and little blunt featherlets starting to poke out near their butts where their tail feathers will be. They peck at the ground, and the walls, and occasionally each other. They preen their little fuzzy bodies. They dip their little beaks in the water then lift their head back to swallow. They stretch wee wings and try to fly. They are fun to watch.

The largest chick is just starting to show a comb on her head at the top of her beak. The grower Jean painted the little tuft of her head pink to distinguish her from other little fuzzy black chicks. She is a Barred Rock breed, so we called her Rocky. We expect her to be a steady producer of brown eggs (~1/day).

The smallest chick is also a dark little thing with yellow spots. She is an Australorp, currently named Aussie, but probably not for long. She will also lay brown eggs when she gets older (probably in the spring).

Our third wee chick, Greta la Gorda, is the most beautiful so far. She is brown with dark stripes on her wings and little puffy feathers on her cheeks. She is an Ameraucana – an American cross with Auracana chickens from Chile. She will lay pale blue eggs that we are much anticipating.

So far it’s been super-easy. We keep them in a deep Tupperware with newspaper on the bottom that we change daily. I refresh their water in the morning, though I don’t have to. We’re feeding them a standard medicated feed until they get older. We pick them up several times a day and pet them so they get used to us. We borrowed a heat lamp from our friends Deborah and Walter Sepulveda who raised chickens this spring. We have to keep them near 90F and gradually bring the temperature down to ambient ~5F/day. We also bought some diatomaceous earth to sprinkle on them and on their bedding to prevent lice/mites.

We are designing the coop and dreaming of the day we can watch them exploring the yard…

Posted in baby chickens | 2 Comments