So now that we have chicks coming, we are trying to figure out where we are going to keep them. We live in a suburb of the city of Bangor, so we are sort of in the country. Not like the country I grew up in, but there are trees and critters and birds (other than pigeons and crows). We have 1.6 acres of land. Some of that is wooded. We have neighbors on either side of us. Our neighbor on the right is separated from us by a wide stretch of trees. Our neighbor on the left, however, is not separated from us at all. We actually share the lawn with them. Our property line runs right down the middle, so we are trying to be considerate.
We plan to have a fenced in run so that we can keep our chickens safe from predators and so that we can keep the chicken dropping mostly contained to one area. Especially since Little Maiden and I are very fond of going barefoot in the summer. So, my original thought was to build a small coop behind our garage. There they would be out of the way and still have plenty of space. A couple of concerns have popped up, though. One is how much are materials for a coop going to cost and two is where are we going to put our swimming pool? We’ve always put our little swimming pool behind the garage because it’s surrounded by trees and offers a lot of privacy. There really isn’t anywhere else to put it that’s not out in the open. We’d have to give up the swimming pool. And then the other thing… Well, to say that our finances are tight would be an understatement. We could probably scrounge enough scrap wood for a small coop.
I put these questions to my husband. He asked if I thought the chickens would bother the gardens. Last spring I experimented with Square Foot Gardening. I have two 4×4 foot garden frames to the left of the house, close to the property line. I think the chickens my trample the small plants. GH (Geek Husband) said that he had thought of building the coop off of the small out building by the gardens. The out building holds our riding lawn mower, our small collection of gardening tools and odd and ends of the kid’s summer toys. The out building resembles a small barn so we’ve always called it the baby barn. "Actually, the baby barn would be a perfect chicken coop," I said. "Truthfully," GH returned, "we only need it for the lawn mower." We discussed finding somewhere else to keep the lawn mower. Then we’d have a ready-made coop. All we’d have to do is add the fencing, nesting boxes, and perches. So that’s what we’ve decided on. We’ll get the baby barn chicken ready, park the lawn mower somewhere else and still keep our swimming pool. Problem solved!
