LET ME TELL YOU WHY I THINK CHICKENS MAKE GREAT PETS We’ve celebrated our 4th anniversary of being backyard chicken owners this past month. It’s amazing how time flew since my son came home with a chirping shoe box and I had to scramble through the city to find baby chick feed, feeder, and waterer. Since then we had a rooster, which had to move to … [Read more...]
DIY: Chicken Waterer from Beverage Cooler
In order to avoid any illnesses that other birds might bring over by using our chicken's waterer, I decided to make a waterer with nipples. I didn't use the water pipe to attach nipples because, first we only have 2 hens and the effort would not be worth it. Second, we don’t have a clean water source near our coop.I decided to use a beverage … [Read more...]
Adventures of runaway chickens
The last two chicks we've adopted turned out to have very different personalities than the ones we had before. We had a White Leghorn Rooster (Fluffy), an Orpington (Yellow) hen and an Austrolorp (Chick Vader) hen before. From what I've read, these are heavier, more domestic, humand-friendly breeds. We usually let them roam in the backyard instead … [Read more...]
Backyard Chickens 2014
We've had drastic changes with our backyard chickens since I wrote my last post about winterizing chicken coop. We've had a really harsh winter with two weeks of sub zero temperatures. Yellow and Chick Vader handled the cold temperatures during the day pretty fairly. We took them in when especially windchill was at its worst and at nights just in … [Read more...]
How to winterize your chicken coop
Once we rodent proofed our coop, I wanted to insulate the coop to get ready for Chicago winter. I am really glad I set out early because I made some mistakes in my initial design and had to redo the whole insulation before temperatures went down. I purchased 1" white Styrofoam sheets from Home Depot. They might have it at other hardware stores but … [Read more...]
Rodent proofing the chicken coop and the first egg
When we setup the coop initially, I've read about putting chicken wire down in the soil around the perimeter but I got lazy and skipped it at the time. As it started to get colder, I've heard about rats from the neighbors so I decided to install wire underneath the coop. The coop wasn't fixed to the ground and it is light, so we just moved it. … [Read more...]
Our backyard chickens and new coop
It's been more than 2 months since we brought Fluffy and Yellow home. They were merely 4-day-old chicks when we got them. (Read how we got them here) We kept them in a brooder at home for a while. We knew we were going to keep them so I set out to find a proper coop. I found one that I felt is the best setup for our backyard on eBay and ordered. I … [Read more...]
Raising Baby Chicks, Chicago Style
Last month, (April) my son's class setup an incubator in the class. They were learning about the eggs, life cycle of eggs and chickens. The eggs hatched on April 29th, as my son dutifully informed me. He was very excited. Few fays later, we got a notification letter asking for parents' permission to hold the chicks. He held the chicks. That Friday, … [Read more...]