To get to Rosemary Farm, of course.  If you have a farm you’ve got to have chickens.  So off to TSC for there annual batches of baby chickens.  We started with fourteen because thats about all our bathtub can hold comfortably.  That is until our brood of hatchlings become roosters and hens. (At the rate they are growing I expect that to be no more then a month or so.) So the next big project – build a chicken coop.

After some discussion of the best and most convenient places on the farm to build a coop, we settled on the old maple barn.  A smaller out-building about the size of a three-car garage with a small upstairs.  The first job was cleaning it out.  The barn had become a trash depository as had every building on the property.  That only took a day and as far as designing and building the coop, we had some time…

Until we saved Byron!

Byron (as we named him) was a rooster a friend found in his backyard in Brooklyn.  Not knowing who else to call, he called us.  We had him call a local animal rescue to capture the chicken until we could get down there and pick him up.  Of course, my wife returned with Byron, Emily, the Weird Sisters and Bunny Tuscadero!  (A rooster, three hens and a HUGE rabbit.)

OK – we need to step it up on the coop.  Until then the chickens go in the Hobbit room – a room in back of the house that has low ceiling and a small door that comes out of a cabinet in the hallway.  The bunny went in the sun room, of course.

We picked a corner of the Maple barn that looked finished enough and decided on an eight by fourteen coop.  (That should hold the chicks too when they are ready as my wife does not “plan” on keeping all fourteen – right.)

So I quickly built this little coop from a bunch of old lumber and a battered (screenless) screen door.  I used some roofing tin from another barn we had to pull down for the ceiling.  So all we had to buy was some extra chicken wire and this is what we got.

Byron is now lord of the manor.  And in another few weeks he will have a dozen or so chicks to add to his flock.