Chickens!

I told you a few weeks ago about my new found desire to raise chickens.  I went to my favorite creative resource, Pinterest, and began discovering the complexities and simplicities to keeping chickens.  We don't have a backyard, so hopefully, to my neighbors joy, our chickens will be kept in the front yard. 

They need to be completely enclosed, so that no animals or poachers can get at my chickens!  They need a nesting box to lay their eggs, a perch to sleep on, and area to scratch a romp during the day.  Luckily I have a man in my life who is handy with a tool built and found materials.  He rustled us up some pallets and an abandoned armoir and built us a chicken condo reminiscent of a horse corral.  We purchased chicken wire, chicken feed, pine shavings and a little invention called a chicken nipple.  I did the research, especially on a website called backyard chickens, and explained to my husband what chickens need and he did the building.  I was really impressed with how great the finished product looked, and for very little money!

Now for the chickens, I wasn't ready to start with little chicks, they need to be kept at a constant temperature and fed special food.  After a few months they grow their adult feathers and are called pullets. Depending on the breed, they mature into hens at about 4-7 months and are hens.  Chicks just cost a few dollars, pullets a few tens of dollars and egg laying hens more like $60.  You can find chickens for sale at all of these stages on....Craigslist!  So there is the age of the chicken, but there is also a variety of chicken breeds, just like dogs.  They have different color bodies, lay different color eggs, get to be different sizes, have different temperaments, etc.  I became fascinated with Ameraucana chickens because they lay a blue-green egg.  My other interest became the Black Copper Maran because their eggs are dark brown and are the most prized of French chefs!  I browsed the Craigslist offerings all through the construction of our coop, and when my honey said he was a half day from finishing, I began to make phone calls, and discovered two nice gentleman in the eastern parts of San Diego county raising chickens on their properties.  First I met with a young man and his wife and toddler.  They had a large coop on the property behind there home.  It was one big coop with about 50 birds, maybe 8 roosters.  He had Ameraucanas, Leghorns, and about 4 other kinds I can't remember.  In his house he had a hamster cage fills with little chicks.  I bought two 4 month old Ameraucanas from him for $30 each.  Then I took back roads west, passing over the 15 to a friendly older guy who I had already learned from our phone call, was all too happy to offer me all sorts of useful information on raising chickens.  He was more of a breeder hobbyist, trying to create the most perfect example of the French Black Copper Maran.  He had lots of smaller, but still big that you could walk in, aviaries each with one rooster and about 5 hens, as well as coops with younger birds and breeder filled with chicks.  He walked me around to each coop and told me about what he had going on.  It was great, I learned a lot, and can definitely call him now if I need for a question.  He sold me one Maran, also about 4 months old.  I was going to buy 2 month olds for him, but when I showed him the Ameraucanas I had already purchased, he picked out another older bird for me that he thought would be a better match.  She went into her own box and I headed west to get my new chickens to their new home on the beach before sunset.  My husband had put in all the finishing details while I was gone, nesting boxes, the ladder walk-way to get them in to their henhouse at night.  I put the ladies into their new home and fed them some chopped bok choy and cornmeal.  At sunset they instinctually made their way up their ramp to their henhouse and went to sleep.  It was amazing!