Getting ready for chickens
Apr 15th, 2009 by Amy
We mentioned a while back that chickens were in our future, and we even showed you a photo of the coop. We now have a date to pick up the girls this Saturday. I can hardly wait, but am also a little nervous. Matt and I have been doing all sorts of research this week to make sure we give them a nice place to live. We still have to prime and paint the coop, get feed, and various other chicken-related necessities. After we pick them up Saturday morning, I am sure we will spend most of the weekend staring at them and trying to pick them up.
We are getting 4 pullets (shhh - don’t tell the City of Eugene) - 1 buff brahma, 1 light brahma, and 2 white cochins. According to what we’ve read, they each lay about 3 eggs a week when fully grown. They are definitely not the most productive egg layers, but they are known to be good pets.
We bought both our coop and chicken run from Jesse Sullivan of Monroe, OR. He and his wife, Cristen run a goat farmette called Caprikoda Croft just outside Monroe, OR. Jesse designed both the run and the coop so they are light enough to easily be moved by two people or just one, if necessary. He also made them so they fit together. Although I don’t have a photo of the part of the coop that connects to the run, you can see the small chicken door on the run that allows them to move between the run and the coop.
We hope to let the chickens free range in our backyard while we are at home, but will need to setup something to protect the garden from their wandering beaks. The coop and run will be moved about 1-2 times a week so the chickens have new ground to forage and so they don’t over-fertilize any one part of the yard.
We took the photos of the the chickens on our February visit to the farm that we are buying our pullets from. We will post pictures of our girls when they get home on Saturday. Stay tuned!
Our pullets are 2 weeks old now. They are growing so fast. We live in the city too and were told that if your property is 0 - 10,000 sq. feet you are allowed 4 chickens. We are still finishing up the coop.
We are also big blueberry fans and wonder if you have ever been to OSU’s Blueberry Field Day. We when last year and ate hundreds of different varieties. My husband and I both choose Elizabeth (independently of each other!) as the best flavor. We just got our Raintree Nursery catalog last week and noticed that they are now selling it.
Tona-
Thank you for the OSU Blueberry Field Day idea. I have heard about it, but never visited. That would be a great little trip up the valley. We bought two unique fruit trees from Raintree (a danube cherry and a mirabelle plum), but I so wish they were closer so we didn’t have the pay the shipping! I haven’t visited One Green World in Molalla yet, and hear that it has a lot of less common fruits and fruit varieties.
And thanks for the chicken clarification. We have more than 10,000 sf in our lot (about 14k, I think), so I guess we are legal!