Chicken Update: What’s New with the Coop?

It’s been a while since I gave an update on our chickens…and for good reason. They’ve been absent from our coop for the last 6 months!

This year our original flock was turning 3 years old, and we knew that their steady egg laying days were soon coming to an end. It’s hard to justify keeping chickens when you don’t get eggs in return on a regular basis, especially when we are only allowed to have 5 hens in an enclosed coop. So, back in November, we made the hard decision to send our four hens off to live out their days elsewhere. A very kind woman from our church offered to take them to her farm and incorporate them into her flock.

I’m imagining them gallivanting around their new farm digs, free-ranging to their little chicken-heart’s content. Something they sadly, could never be allowed to do here with our zoning ordinances.

It’s sometimes difficult to make choices when it comes to animals you’ve raised, but I think we made the right decision in this case.

So, our coop has been sitting empty all winter long. No eggs to check. No hens to feed.

I’m not gonna lie, after the crazy insane winter we had, a break away from that was sort of nice.

But ultimately, we knew we missed them a lot and had plans to get a new batch of chicks in the spring. Which brings us back to where we are now.

We have a new set of “babies” that we bought around Easter that have steadily been outgrowing their brooder out in our garage under their heat lamp for the last 6 weeks.

This time around we went with a different breed of chicks and purchased Ameraucanas – also known as EE (Easter Eggers) for their blue-green colored eggs they lay. This is different from our previous batch of chicks which were Cinnamon Queens, laying brown eggs.

Our newly feathered chicks are almost ready to move outside to their new home in our coop.

But first, I needed to do some prep work.

I emptied out all the old shavings and debris from our entire coop that had been sitting all winter, which will make excellent garden fertilizer this spring, and gave the inside of it a good hosing down.

After that I sprayed the inside walls with a vinegar spray and started scrubbing.

Then another rinsing down with the hose and letting everything air dry in the sunshine to get it ready for the new flock.

Lastly, we decided to move the coop to a new location on our yard. We moved the coop to a spot that will be out of the direct sun, underneath the shady side of our willow tree. This should help keep the chickens cooler in the hot summertime.

In another week or so, our chicks will be ready to graduate from their brooder to the big coop and the fun of raising backyard chickens will begin all over again!

It will still be several months until we will see any eggs, but hopefully by the end of the summer/early fall, we will start seeing some. I am excited for the new pretty “Easter Egg” colors that these hens will provide us with.

Have you ever thought about raising backyard chickens of your own? Most local communities now allow a few hens in an enclosed coop. They make wonderful “productive pets” as we like to call them, giving you fresh eggs on a daily basis.

If you’ve got an interest, be sure to check out some of my old blog posts on how to get started in the process.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, we did name these fluffy cuties…our new flock is affectionately known as: Sunny, Ginger, Chip, Lily, and Duck.