The Chicken Coop Coup

“ There’s nothing will teach you responsibility like owning a pet or becoming a parent.”

c e hollis

Chicks peeping from their home in a cardboard box on hay with a warming light hung above them. They occupied my farmhouse mudroom one spring. They had to be watched over and tended inside until they grew large enough to transfer to the chicken tractor.

The tractor was a triangular building with chicken wire on wood and two small wheels in back so it could be easily pulled. The bottom was open so the chicks could eat and be in grass or on gravel so they could grow, dining on grass and bugs. The chicken tractor would be moved every few days to give the chicks a new patch of ground. So we raised some chickens for a year or two.

This time I decided I wanted to reboot and get chickens I began perusing the Tractor Store catalog on line for a good coop. When I talked to my daughter about my choice she said she had an old coop I could have and that she’d raise the chicks for me in her garage if I finance a batch for her too.

Now that’s a deal I can live with, so I purchased 15 Rhode Island Reds and five bantys that went to live on Brenna’s farm. Meantime, Ron set to work on a large coop. He finished about the time the chicks were ready to move. now I have chickens. It almost sounds like a disease or something, right?

The chickens climb a wooden ladder to the perches and nesting boxes above their grass floor. They are safe uostairs from rain and the sun’s glare. The metal walls protect them. They have weathered several Oklahoma summer storms with no ill effects at all.

The feeder hangs by a rope inside and off the ground. The water bucket hangs also and the chickens get their water from spigots in the base. A pan of dirt and sand gives them a place for a dust bath so they don’t have a fowl odor. We use the four-wheeler to move the coop here and there about the property and the chickens love it.

I have enjoyed the chickens more than I thought I would. At first we watched them from our lawn chairs we had carried to sit close. They are curious creatures.

Now I have been getting eggs for a few weeks. I need egg cartons! The eggs are brown and small but I do start seeing a few large ones lately. The yokes are bright yellow and pretty as can be. My coup to get myself chickens and a coop has worked and I am happy with the deal.

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O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Matthew 23:37