Being the po' folks that we are, we had to do things with frugality in mind, meaning we wanted to spend as little as humanly possible while still accomplishing the goal.  In this case we bought chicks locally.  It was a lot cheaper and more personal than ordering chicks thru the mail (you don't get to look at the product before buying, and some may not survive the trip). 

 

Of course since we started this adventure in the trailing end of winter, we couldn't just pop up a dog house in the yard and stick some tiny chickens out there and expect them to survive, nope, they had to come in the house with us.  This was OK in the beginning of course, when they were pretty small.  We started off with 3 Black Japanese Bantams, which were small to start with and don't really grow big at all, their adult size is about par with 1 month old Rhode Island Red, which we'll get to in a moment.

 

These little chickens hung out in a box in the middle of the living room floor with a light fixture clamped to the side of the box to help keep em warm.  Chicks need a temp around the 90 degree range to keep them happy.  They'll let you know whether they're hot or cold.  If they huddle under the lamp, they're freezin', and if they're spread out away from the center of the light beam, they're letting you know they don't wanna become little rotisserie chickens before their time, like I said, pretty easy to deal with.  Other than that, a couple of feeders for water and starter feed, which was reasonably cheep, I mean cheap, at $13 for a 50lb bag, kept these little chicks alive. 

 

Unfortunately one of the bantams did die, and after having a service for him, which was nothing more than a prompt burial in the pet cemetery, we started looking for more chicks, can't do anything with 2 chickens now, especially when their eggs will be rather small.  After a search, we turned up another chicken farmer who had some month old Rhode Island Reds for a reasonable price.  We ended up getting 3 hens and the lady threw in a rooster for free since she had too many.  Imagine what those 2 little bantams thought when this foursome showed up, crowding them out.  Luckily they did get along.

 

 

 

At this point we immediately started building a chicken tractor to house these stinky bastards when they got big enough and the weather broke enough that they wouldn't freeze.  We built a chicken tractor with the intent of being able to move the whole works periodically while still keeping the birds protected from the "real world".  We didn't know if our dogs would be a problem or if every animal in the woods would suddenly materialize once some vulnerable chickens found themselves roaming around free.  The tractor is around 8 ft long, 4 ft high and 3 ft wide.  The coop area has these dimensions with the exception of its 3 ft length.  We installed a set of nesting boxes totalling 4 individual boxes and a single roosting post in the middle of the enclosure.  We also installed a light fixture in the ceiling of the coop, more for inducing the chickens' laying instinct through light exposure than for heat, but in the winter, an incandescent light can still take some of the chill from the enclosure. 

 

First reason was during a test run of the chicken tractor, we only put one layer of normal chicken wire on the run and put the Red rooster and a Red hen in the tractor for the day, only to come back and find the chicken wire torn open and the chickens out.  We only found the hen, the rooster, a no show.  We figured that one of my mom's dogs tore the thing open trying to get to the chickens.  At that point we made repairs and added another layer of heavier welded wire on top of the chicken wire, so any animal will have to work to get into that thing. 

 

Needless to say we ended up moving the tractor to an area next to the garden and fencing in the entire area, so all of this almost didn't matter, since we let the chickens out during the day to roam the fenced in area.  Otherwise, when we put the trio of chickens in the coop, they adjusted fast, probably because of the rooster coming in and asserting his dominance over the flock.  The 3 larger black chickens are the new additions to the tractor.

 

At this point we decided to start building a larger coop, a more permanent fixture in the chicken yard in order to accomodate the 2nd generation chickens along with the 1st gen birds.  This coop was situated on a 4x8 plywood board and would be 4ft high to allow for headroom for us when we go to clean the thing out.  It will have two tiers of nesting boxes and two roosting posts and a large entry door that would be enough for even one of us to crawl into. 

 

With plywood sides, and a tar paper/steel roof, this thing should last a while.  Its suspended on masonry blocks to keep the base from rotting due to moisture, and to serve as a barrier from rodent infiltration. 

 

 

We still have to paint the whole coop, but that will come soon enough.  The main thing was moving everybody into their new home.  This was best done at night when everybody was half asleep and less prone to fighting back.  We removed the 1st gen birds from the tractor and dumped them inside, then took the 2nd gens from the house and placed them in and shut them all in.  The following morning, everyone appeared like they went into one of those weird mental universe time warps, where they woke up in another world.  Taking away that "this is my turf" mentality that's established by the 1st flock into a coop, no one got into any fights. 

 

 

 

While the 1st gen chickens were outside, we did lose two more bantams to the heat.  We did have to clip the wings of three of the chickens due to the idea they kept flying up to the entry gate and escaping into the yard.  While this wasn't a problem at first when they hung around the front of the house with the dogs, which surprisingly don't mind the birds, but now they start roaming farther and farther from the house.  After clipping the feathers off of their wings, that problem disappeared. 

 

Another problem that has happened was that some of the chickens we had inside started getting sick and weak before finally dying.  We don't know what caused this but we lost several chickens already.  We only lost one of the 1st gen chickens and that was one of the ones we clipped the wings on, which the stress from that probably added to whatever was already ailing the bird.  Everybody else is still doing pretty good. 

 

Because of these losses we ended up looking for more chickens.  We did get a free Grey Japanese bantam from another lady we get eggs from since she didn't have the room in her pen for the hen.  At the same time we acquired three Auracana hens that are 2 months old from another guy and three Polish something or another chickens.  The Polishes are wild looking, they have this funny feather hairstyle that almost looks like an Afro, I nicknamed them Afro-chickens cuz of that (I'm half black y'all so there aint no racism in that statement).  Anyway the Auracanas, Polishes, the Grey Jap and even the Black Jap bantam from the 1st gen set all went into the chicken tractor as their own isolated flock.  They're all doing well so at this point we'll see how things go.  The weather's starting to break now so the birds don't have to worry about getting cooked to death as much now.