Home is Where You Roost

Home is where you hang your hat. Oh let’s face it. That’s a bit too cliché. I haven’t hung a hat in my home ever. Besides that, I have higher standards for my home than a hat rack. Running water for one. Electricity for two. But for a chicken, her coop is anything with a roof. Literally, anything with a roof. Our first coop didn’t have much more than that. 

There was a time not too long ago when we didn’t know what we wanted from chickens. We knew what we wanted was clean food from ethically raised chickens, but that didn’t qualify us to care for them.  We didn’t know if they were right for us and if we were right for them. What we knew came from books and websites and a site visit to a neighbor who had a flock. I had never even held a chicken before the day we purchased our first. Still, one day my wife and I decided that if we don’t do it, we’ll never do it. So we did it.

Our first hens (actually pullets because they were so young) came home with us one Saturday morning in May, 2010. They came home to a coop which I made for them the day before from recycled materials I found on the side of the road during bulk trash pick-up. Total new materials ran a whopping  $6 and the girls couldn’t have been happier! They had food, water, and a place all to themselves. We appropriately nicknamed the old place the “Clampett Coop”, a nod to the kind of place you might expect to see when watching the Beverly Hillbillies. You can read more about the Clampett Coop HERE.

In the months that followed, we realized our interest in chickens was growing and that they enriched our lives more than we did theirs. They have such varied personalities, likes, and dislikes just like the rest of us. We knew that the birds were not only here to stay, but that our flock was going to grow past three. Like all development in this city, we eventually tore down the “old” structure to make way for a new and improved one. You can see the new one(s) on tour in October, but I’ve posted a picture of the original one here to show that all you need to get into chickens is $6 for hinges and a heart big enough for them to live in. –Jason Lackey