Urban Survivalists

Lately, we have been securing sources of food for our home. This week we are working on providing a source of protein. We thought chickens provide a number of different sources of food.

Some items that you can receive from chickens:

• Organic Eggs
• Organic meat from the older birds
• Organic meat from roosters
• You can sell chicks if your area lets you have roosters to fertilize the eggs

We have already purchased chicks for our endeavors and have been keeping them in a  large dog crate for the first two weeks of their life. They were delivered to our house by the post office, which made for an interesting mail day. The chicks were growing faster than anticipated and needed a larger area to stay in. Thus the creation of the chicken coop. We decided to get buff laced polish chickens for several reasons. The first is that they are a smaller gamier bird which will enable them to eat less food than larger laying hens. Second, they are a breed originally developed for egg laying and make good layers. The third reason was just for fun, and it was because they have poofy feathers on their head! How bad ass is that..they have built in hats There is a link to an image of them below.

Buff Laced Polish Chicken Image

We drew up some rough plans for the coop and the build has stuck fairly close to the plan. We are quite proud of this considering past projects

Plan view of the chicken coop

Front elevation of the chicken coop

Back elevation of chicken coop

The main features of the chicken coop include: hen laying area, storage area, sloped roof to collect rain water for the chickens, and multiple large doors for easy cleaning. The most important factor of the design was actually the ability to clean the coop, cause chickens, well…they shit everywhere! We also plan on putting siding on the coop and painting it to look like the house. This is because coops that look bad also get called in by complaining neighbors, and that is something we want to prevent.

We will have some build pictures for you guys shortly. So take care and stay sustainable

P&S

Related posts:

1. Updated Goals