My wonderful husband, Joe, finally agreed to my long-held scheme to keep a small flock of chickens.  He questioned it at first.  Actually, he questioned my sanity at first.  Why would I want chickens?  What would I do with them?  There's the obvious of course, eggs.  And for the not-squeamish, there's, well, chicken.  Meat.

There are other considerations.  Chicken manure makes excellent compost.  Chickens are bug-hunters extraordinaire and will swiftly consume the pests in your garden.  They're cute, especially when they're babies.  Chickens also have a surprising amount of personality and are fairly trainable.  Mine come when called.  

Did I mention the eggs?  Trust me, you haven't truly had an egg until you've tasted one from a home flock.  From a purely subjective viewpoint, they are tastier and more filling.  Objectively, some studies have shown eggs from home flocks to be lower in fat and cholesterol than those from factory farms.

Before you bring home that first fluffy little chick, do a little research.  I picked up two books:  Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces by Barbara Kilarski and Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens: Care/Feeding/Facilites by Gail Damerow.  Both were quite helpful in details of coop design as well as many other facets of chicken care.

 I also highly recommend discussing your pet project with your neighbors as well as determining the local laws in your area regarding livestock.

I think that many people have the misconception that chickens must live on a farm way out in the country.  Fortunately this attitude seems to be changing, but for those who persist in thinking this way, read on!  I will show how we house and maintain our flock and you'll see just how easy and doable it is.

Chickens in the city require outdoor space as well as protected sleeping quarters.  I knew that for my chicken-scheme to work, the chicken's entire living quarters had to be secure.  Lots of things like to eat chickens, and even in the city there are many predators who will happily dine on your flock, day and night.  Security for my chickens was therefore of primary importance.

A close second though, was ease of maintenance.  Chickens produce not only eggs, but poop.  Don't sneer!  Like I said before, chicken manure makes great compost.   You don't want to toss it out with the garbage.  Instead, toss it into your compost pile.  When designing my coop, I wanted it to be easy to access, easy to gather up that valuable poop and be out of the elements.  Now, I live in Seattle; you may have heard it rains here a little.  I knew that the last thing I would want to do is stand in the rain, cleaning up after my chickens.  We came up with a coop design that allows our chickens and me to be completely dry and comfy during the worst of our stormy weather.

Cost will naturally be a consideration.  Joe and I built our entire coop for about $300.  We used a combination of new materials as well as some lumber and hardware we salvaged.  If you are not skilled at carpentry, you can purchase ready-made coops, such as the Eglu, either online or at your local feed store. 

This is the chicken's outdoor enclosure, or The Run as I call it, situated on the west and north sides of my garage.  I chose this spot for a number of reasons.  It was two-thirds enclosed already, with fencing, gates and the garage forming the perimeter.  All it needed was to be roofed over with chicken wire to keep winged predators out.  

Before chickens, it was nothing but an unused trash heap; weedy, overgrown and filled with junk.  After removing the debris, Joe put up the chicken wire.  Scroll through pictures and you'll see how on the north side Joe simply dropped the wire from the eaves on the garage roof down to the chain-link fence.  On the west side, he ran support poles from the garage to the chain-link and stretched the chicken wire straight across.  This makes it easy to walk the entire length of the run, I only have to stoop to get through the gate.  To give you an idea of it's size, the west side is about six feet wide, the north about five feet wide.  Height-wise, well, Joe is 6'4" and he can walk the entire length of The Run without bending or hitting chicken wire.  Nice and roomy for all.

The water jug is elevated to keep poop and debris out.  The ramp leads inside the garage to the chicken's sleeping quarters, The Henhouse.

The Henhouse is where the chickens sleep at night.  I chose to place it in the garage, although there is plenty of space in The Run.  The garage is detached with a storage loft above; Joe graciously gave up the unused space under the stairs for the Henhouse.  In the garage they are doubly protected from nighttime predation, and the extremes of weather.

There are four doors across the front; sleeping perches are to the right, nestboxes to the left, with feed and water in the center.  There are also sliding doors on the nestbox end to allow for egg collection and cleaning.  The trap door on top allows for plenty of ventilation and the opening is screened over.

This is where the chickens sleep at night and (eventually) lay their eggs.  The heat lamp keeps them comfortable during chilly nights.  Notice that it's screened to keep them away from the bulb.  The lamp outlet and cord are protected by heavy-duty shielding, and even after months is showing no signs of being pecked or worn.  

The feeder hangs from a chain.  Since they spend all day outside eating bugs, grass, etc., it takes them about a day and a half to go through a full feeder.  Notice how the water jug is on a flat paver stone to give it stability and prevent tipping.

Lastly, notice the floor of the Henhouse.  It's three sections of wood frame with plastic coated chicken wire screwed to it.  This set up is strong enough to support all of my hens, plus the weight of the paver and water jug.  We chose to use chicken wire because the size of the openings allows droppings to fall through readily without sticking and building up on the floor.  This keeps the hen's feet clean and the Henhouse overall cleaner.  The dropping fall through and are collected on a droppings tray filled with pine shavings.

Chicken manure!  One of the reasons to keep chickens is so you can gather that precious poop and turn it into nitro-charged compost.  A word of caution:  never use fresh chicken poop in your garden, it's too hot and can damage your plants.

Joe came up with this droppings tray design.  He salvaged a flat base with rolling castors from a friend.  Don't know what it was the base to, but it does a great job now of holding the droppings tray.

For the droppings tray itself, Joe essentially built a low table with a lip that matches the dimensions under the Henhouse exactly.  Over the table I drape a blue tarp, then spread pine shavings over the whole thing.  The tray is about 2 inches deep and I fill it up full with the shavings.  

I chose pine shavings because they're compostable and relatively inexpensive (one bale costs $10 here in Seattle).  To give an example of how long one bale will last; I've been working on one bale since I moved my flock into their permanent quarters in mid-April.  I still have enough left to do two or three more spot cleanings.

Cleaning the droppings tray is a quick and simple process. Just pull the tray out from under the Henhouse.  In the garage I have plenty of room to maneuver it and around it, all the while staying dry and comfortable during the worst weather Seattle has to offer.  I tend to spot clean whenever there's an accumulation underneath the roosting area.  That's really where most of the poop is and the rest of the tray only has stragglers here and there and most of the pine shavings remain clean and dry.  I conserve on my pine shavings consumption this way.  To spot clean, I simply rake droppings and soiled shavings onto a dustpan, then dump it into a recycled kitty litter container.  Once I've collected up all the droppings, I add in enough fresh shavings to make up the difference.  Mix the shavings together, even them out and it's done. Takes me all of five or ten minutes, including taking the poop and shavings out to the, you guessed it, compost bin.

Eventually though, the pine shavings become soiled enough even with spot cleaning that the whole droppings tray requires changing.  This is actually easier than spot cleaning since I simply pick up the entire blue tarp, bundle the edges together and carry the whole thing out to, yeah, you know by now.  I keep two blue tarps, so I always have a clean one ready to go.  Spread the clean tarp over the tray, add fresh shavings, even them out and voila!  Done!

I hang the dirty blue tarp by clipping it to my chain-link fence with a couple carabiners.  I can hose or scrub it off if necessary, and then just leave it up to dry for a couple days before folding up and putting away to be ready for the next change.  Before pushing the droppings tray back under the Henhouse, I sweep up underneath, then back under it goes. Simple and efficient.

I love this system.  So much I had to share it and hope it helps someone.  It's ridiculously simple to maintain and I love how it separates my hens far from their droppings keeping them and the whole Henhouse living spaces clean and free of dropping accumulations.  Maintaining a rigorously clean environment will naturally contribute significantly to the overall health of a flock.

My flock is still young and have not yet started to lay.  I love spending time with them and watching their chicken behaviors develop.  If you've been considering getting a small flock, I say, Do It!  It's even easier than you think.