My girls are here!

A month or two ago I posted about debating between chickens or ducks and I got some great responses! We decided on chickens and I got to work on building the pen and fixing the coop. And yesterday, I went and picked up four lovely hens. One is a Marans from 2019, and there's a Brahma cross, an Araucana cross and a Orpington Buff all from this year. The Marans is laying and the Araucana cross is expected to start soon.

Ultimately, I made a permanent pen of about 20' by 40' surrounding the coop. There is a small paddock of 10' by 30' that I can give them access to, and the pen has two exits that I can connect some hot chicken wire to, in order to have them walk around certain areas of the garden. It is as close to the rotating paddock system as we could get here, and I think since there's only four if them, it will work out well.

Our little boy is so happy too! The hens all have such distinct personalities and we love watching them peck around and finding out what they like to eat.

Yay chickens! My garden just got upgraded on the Happy Place Scale!

Beautiful!

Congratulations! looks like you'll be having lots of fun. I love the individual "action chicken" portraits!

Yay! The coop looks fancy!

Thank you very much!

The coop was actually built by my father-in-law, about 20 years ago when my in-laws still gardened and raised chickens. It was his first big project after he retired from a job he had hated for 35 years, and he spent many months designing it and building it. It has three departments: the lower floor was for the meat roosters, the middle floor was for the laying hens, and the penthouse was for the cats. The hens and roosters had separate entries into the coop and separate pens too. Right now, the rooster department is used as storage for food and bedding, and I have partially added the kitty section to the hen house. So now they have a fairly large mansion between the four of them now!

My father-in-law passed away in May 2019 and yesterday was his birthday (coincidentally, I didn't plan it to work out like that), so it felt extra special to have the coop in use again on that day <3