We're expecting!

NO, not another baby, at least not a human baby. We're expecting hens! We just put in a permit application (which needed to be signed by our neighbors) to have 6 backyard chickens. There are a few hundred other families in this city that also have chickens, so we’re not all that unusual for doing this, but we do have to follow the rules.

Why would we do such a thing? Well, there are several reasons.

• I (Minke) grew up seeing my grandma’s pet chickens when I lived in the Netherlands as a young child. I really enjoyed helping take care of them and eating their eggs. We think No*ah and Olli*e will enjoy it too.
• Even the best organic farm can’t afford to feed their chickens as well as an individual can on good starter and kitchen scraps. Eggs from home-raised chickens just taste better! They have beautiful orange yolks and are much more flavorful.
• Chickens eat insects, such as ticks and mosquitoes.
• Chickens are pretty easy to care for, and not smelly if the coop is kept clean.
  
• Compost for the garden! We have 4 raised vegetable beds that need lots of compost every year.
• Not counting startup costs, it costs about 50 cents a dozen to raise your own backyard organic eggs, about a 2-dollar savings on every dozen. We think we’ll break even in about a year, since we are starting with chicks. This isn’t our primary motivation, but it doesn’t hurt.
• Full-grown young chickens lay 5-7 eggs a week. If we have 6 hens, that’ll be about 35 eggs a week, hopefully enough to share some with family and neighbors. No mail orders, though!
• Did you know that most of the food you get from the grocery store travels over a thousand miles to get to you (if you live here in MN, anyway)? We want to bring our food sources a little closer to home, so that not all our food has to use a bunch of fossil fuels to get to us. We also have a vegetable garden, shop at farmer’s markets and try to buy locally at co-ops, and this is just one more way to add to the habit.
• In some areas of Minn*eapolis and in other cities, chickens have become a fun way for neighbors and their kids to get to know each other. We’d like to welcome neighbors and their kids by to see our chickens and feed them scraps. The boys have lots of little buddies these days, and it’ll be a nice thing to share with them. We might even have the Sunday School class over sometime.

Here’s what we are doing in particular:

• We will NOT be keeping a rooster. Hens aren’t very noisy, but roosters can be a nuisance and aren’t needed for egg production.
• In case you’re wondering, we will only be using the chickens as pets and for eggs. If we need to get rid of a hen, we will take it elsewhere to be butchered.
• The housing setup for the hens will consist of an outdoor “run” and a “hen house” (where the chickens lay eggs and roost at night) inside the garage. (A coop = a run and a hen house)
• Our “run” will be an enclosed 10x10 dog kennel attached to our garage. The kennel will be within our fenced yard, proving extra protection from possible predators. We are lucky enough to have some granite counter “seconds” in our garage that will make a perfect “concrete floor” when placed upside down on the ground. This will make the run easy to clean thoroughly with a hose. Eventually, we will surround the run with lattice to make it more attractive. You can see the waiting kennel panels below, and that's the garage wall the opening will go into. We'll need to build a roof as well.
  

• Our “hen house” will be inside the garage, and accessible from the run through a framed opening from inside the kennel/run. This will make it easy to feed and water the chickens in the winter without standing outside in the cold. The opening will be lockable, and the chickens will be locked up at night. In winter, the hen house will be surrounded by straw bales for insulation.
• We will probably be getting pullots (hens less than a year old).
• Our hens will not be allowed out of the coop unsupervised. They may walk (supervised) in our fenced backyard for a short time on occasion while we clean the coop, and in winter, we plan to allow them some time to stretch their legs in the garage when it’s too cold for them to go into the run for long. Chickens are not great flyers (most can get about 3 feet high), and we will be getting standard, non-flying breeds and clipping a few feathers if necessary to be on the safe side.

We recently took a field trip to Nicoll*et Island to visit a flock that is kept there and do a little research.

After about a minute of terror, the boys had great fun feeding the chickens the arugala and spinach scraps we brought them. The boys also enjoyed walking in the wild part of the island.

All the Dutch people who attended our wedding might remember that the Nicolle*t Island In*n where you stayed was on the other side of this island. can you believe that this beauty exists just across the river from downtown? I love this city.

Now that we have to signatures we need, we can get started. We need to put up a section of privacy fence for the neighbors, attach the kennel to the garage, put down the granite floor, make an opening into the garage, build the hen house (out of scrap wood), and then put everything together before making a field trip to the Farm Store to get supplies and a few hens, hopefully by the end of June. Ste*ve is graciously helping us, and he and Kat*hy will get first dibs on extra eggs. Anyone else is welcome to come help – you don’t want to be like the friends of the Little Red Hen, after all...

Wish us luck!

P.S. If that was an inadequate "No*ah and Oli*ver fix", my apologies. I'll have a post up in the next few days with more pictures of the boys.