Yes, in town. Yes, really.
I grew up on a farm and I have missed having chickens for thirty years. This spring
I finally read the city code instead of assuming, and it turns out our town allows
up to six hens on a residential lot. Hens. Not roosters. (More on that
below, because the rooster question is the first thing everybody asks and the answer
surprises them.)
So in March 1999 I came home from the feed store with a cardboard box that peeped,
and my husband Dale said, "Nancy, what did you do," and now we have six laying hens
in the backyard, we have not bought an egg since August, and the neighbors on both
sides are, let's say, well-supplied. This page is everything I have figured out so
far, for anybody in town who is thinking about it.
On this page:
The Girls ·
The Coop ·
Feed & Water ·
1999 Egg Log ·
Raccoons ·
Winter ·
The Ordinance ·
Neighbor Diplomacy
The Girls
Three breeds, two of each. All of them lay brown eggs. I picked breeds that are
known to be cold-hardy and calm, because we get real winters here and because I
wanted birds that wouldn't panic every time a kid ran past the fence.
| Breed |
Names |
What they're like |
| Rhode Island Red |
Ruby and Pearl |
Deep rust-red feathers. The workhorses. They lay the most and they are the bossiest;
Ruby is top of the pecking order and she knows it. Hardy, not fussy, a little pushy at the feeder. |
| Barred Plymouth Rock |
Domino and Checkers |
Black and white bars all over, like they're wearing a tweed suit. Friendly, curious,
follow me around the yard. Good steady layers and they don't mind the cold one bit. |
| Buff Orpington |
Butter and Biscuit |
Big, round, golden, and so fluffy they look twice their size. The gentlest birds
I've ever had; Biscuit will sit in your lap. They lay a bit less than the others and they are the ones who go
"broody" (sit on the nest and refuse to get off, wanting to hatch eggs that are never going to hatch). Butter did
this for two weeks in July and sulked the whole time. |
They came home as day-old chicks in March, lived in a big cardboard box in the
laundry room under a heat lamp for about six weeks (the dust, oh my word, the dust),
moved out to the coop in late April once they had real feathers and the nights
warmed up, and started laying in the second week of August, right around
five months old, which is normal for these breeds. The first egg was tiny, about
the size of a walnut, and I still have the shell in a jar.
The Coop
Dale built it over three weekends in April out of lumber left over from the deck,
one sheet of exterior plywood, a roll of hardware cloth, and a lot of muttering.
Here's what we ended up with and what I'd tell you to think about:
- Size. The rule of thumb is about 3 to 4 square feet per bird inside the
coop and 8 to 10 square feet per bird in the run. Ours is a 4x6 house (24 square
feet) with a 6x12 run attached, so plenty of room for six and they still all pile
into one corner at night.
- Up off the ground. The house sits about two feet up on legs. Keeps the
floor dry, gives them shade under it, and makes it harder for anything to dig in.
- Roosts. A 2x4 laid wide-side-up, about 18 inches off the floor. Chickens
want to sleep up high, and wide-side-up lets them sit down over their feet in
winter so their toes don't freeze.
- Nest boxes. One box for every three or four hens is plenty. We built two.
All six use the same one. Nobody knows why. The other one holds the golf ball I put
there to show them where eggs go.
- Ventilation but no drafts. This one matters. A closed-up coop gets damp
and ammonia-smelly and that's what makes chickens sick, not cold. We have screened
vents up under the eaves, above where they roost, so air moves but it doesn't blow
on them.
- A door you can walk through. I mean for you, not the chickens. You are
going to be in there with a shovel. Trust me.
- Deep bedding. Pine shavings, about six inches, on the floor. I stir it up
and add fresh on top; the whole thing comes out in the spring and goes to
the compost pile. Chicken manure is
about the best thing you can put in a compost heap, as long as you let it rot down
before it goes on the garden.
Total cost of the coop, since people ask: about $185 in new materials, mostly the
hardware cloth and hinges. If we'd had to buy all the lumber it'd be closer to $300.
Feed & Water
- Chick starter for the first couple of months, then grower, then
layer feed (about 16% protein) once they started laying. All from the feed
store on the highway; a 50-pound bag of layer runs me about three weeks.
- Oyster shell in a separate little dish, free choice. Hens need the calcium
for shells. If you get thin or soft eggshells, that's your first suspect.
- Grit (little pieces of granite) in another dish. Chickens have no teeth;
grit in the gizzard grinds their food. Ours free-range in the yard some afternoons
and pick up a lot on their own, but I keep it out anyway.
- Kitchen scraps and garden leftovers: lettuce, tomato ends, melon rinds,
cooked rice, the overgrown zucchini nobody wants. They go crazy for it. No raw
potato peels, no avocado, nothing moldy, and nothing salty.
- Water. More than you think. A hen drinks somewhere around a pint a day,
more when it's hot, and if the water runs out they stop laying almost immediately.
We have a 3-gallon hanging waterer and I check it twice a day.
1999 Egg Log 
I keep a tally on the calendar by the back door. Six hens at their peak lay
somewhere around five or six eggs each per week, so about 30 to 36 eggs a week is
the most you'd expect, and they'll never all lay every day. Here's ours since they
started. I'll add to this every month.
| Week of |
Eggs |
Notes |
| Aug. 8 | 3 | First egg on Tuesday the 10th! Ruby, I'm nearly sure. Tiny. |
| Aug. 15 | 9 | Both Reds and one Rock laying now. Still small eggs. |
| Aug. 22 | 16 | Found one in the flower bed. Somebody is freelancing. |
| Aug. 29 | 21 | Five of six laying. Eggs getting to normal size. Gave a dozen to the Kowalskis. |
| Sept. 5 | 27 | Biscuit finally started. One double-yolker, which is common with new layers. |
| Sept. 12 | 30 | Best week yet. Two dozen to neighbors, the rest to us. Quiche. |
| Sept. 19 | 28 | Days getting shorter. Watching to see when it drops. |
| Total so far | 134 | as of Sept. 25 |
A hen's laying is tied to daylight. They need something like 14 hours of light to
lay at their best, so production drops in the fall and winter and comes back in
the spring. Some people put a light on a timer in the coop to keep them going. I'm
going to let mine rest this first winter and see what happens. Also, at about 18
months they'll go through their first real molt (lose feathers, look terrible, stop
laying for a few weeks) so next fall this log is going to look sad for a while.
Raccoons (and the night I learned about them)
The suburbs are full of raccoons, and a raccoon looks at a chicken coop the way I
look at a bakery window. The second week the girls were outside, I came out in the
morning and found the run door open and six terrified chickens on top of the coop
and, thank heavens, all six still there. The latch was a simple hook-and-eye.
A raccoon can open a hook-and-eye. A raccoon can open a lot of things. Their
hands are almost like ours. So here's what we changed:
- Hardware cloth, not chicken wire. Chicken wire keeps chickens in. It does
not keep anything out. A raccoon can reach right through it or tear it, and they
will. Half-inch hardware cloth (the stiff welded stuff), stapled every couple of
inches, on every opening including the vents.
- Bury it. The hardware cloth on the run goes down into the ground about a
foot and then bends outward, so anything that starts digging at the wall hits wire.
- Real latches. Every door now has a barrel bolt and a snap clip
(the kind you'd use on a dog leash) through the hole. Raccoons haven't figured out
the clip yet. I'm sure they're working on it.
- Shut them in at dark. Every night. The girls put themselves to bed in the
house at dusk and I go out and close the little door. Every single night, no
exceptions, even in the rain. Especially in the rain.
Hawks are the daytime worry. The run has a roof on it and when the girls are loose
in the yard they have the lilac hedge and the deck to duck under. I've seen one
hawk sit on the fence and think about it.
Getting ready for winter
This will be their first, so this is the plan, not the report. From what my mother
did and what the feed-store people say:
- These are all cold-hardy breeds and chickens carry their own down coats.
No heat lamp; it's a fire risk in a coop full of shavings and they don't need
it. A dry, draft-free coop with the vents open up high is what keeps them healthy.
- The one thing that will really trouble them is frozen water. I'm getting
a heated base for the waterer. Before that arrives, it's carrying warm water out
twice a day.
- Deep bedding, stirred, not changed. The bottom layers composting actually give
off a bit of warmth.
- The big single combs on the Reds and Rocks can get frostbite on the worst
nights. A dab of petroleum jelly on the combs is the old trick.
- They'll go out in snow but they don't like walking in it. A bale of straw
scattered in the run gives them somewhere to stand.
- Fewer eggs. Accept it. They're resting.
The Ordinance
Every town is different, so go down to city hall and read yours, don't take
a neighbor's word for it. Ours, in short:
- Up to six hens on a residential lot.
- No roosters. And here's what surprises people: you don't need one. Hens
lay eggs whether there's a rooster or not; the rooster just makes them fertile, which
you only care about if you're hatching chicks. A rooster's job in town would be
waking the whole block up at 4:30 a.m. and getting me a citation.
- The coop has to be at least 20 feet from any neighbor's house and in the back
yard.
- Kept clean, no smell, no "nuisance." That one's up to me. A clean coop with dry
bedding really does not smell. A wet one does, and that's when you get the phone
call.
- No selling eggs from the house. Giving them away is fine, and boy do I.
Neighbor Diplomacy
Before the chicks even arrived I went next door on both sides and told them what I
was planning, showed them the code, and promised no rooster. Mrs. Kowalski said
"oh, how nice" in a voice that meant "we'll see." Mr. Pruitt on the other side said
his grandmother had chickens and asked if he could bring his grandkids over.
Then I started leaving eggs on porches. A dozen brown eggs with a note. It turns
out this solves nearly every problem you could have with a neighbor. Mrs. Kowalski
now brings her lettuce trimmings over in a bag and asks after Biscuit by name.
The Pruitt grandkids collect eggs every Saturday and think I'm the most interesting
person on the street. The one time the girls got out and scratched up Mrs.
Kowalski's marigolds, I replaced the marigolds and doubled the eggs that week, and
we're fine.
Hens are not loud. They cluck and mutter, and one of them (Pearl) makes a big
proud announcement for about a minute after she lays, which is called the egg
song, and which is nowhere near as loud as the Pruitts' beagle. But every hour I
spend keeping the coop clean is an hour I don't spend at a city council meeting
defending it. That's the deal you make.
Coming this fall
Pictures of the girls and the coop (Dale took a whole roll; it's at the drugstore
and then I have to borrow a scanner), a page of egg recipes since we have a surplus,
and the first winter report. Check back around Thanksgiving.
Other pages I like:
Betty's Backyard Vegetable Patch (chicken manure and
vegetables were made for each other),
The Compost Pile,
Life on a Cattle Ranch, Nebraska Sandhills
(real livestock, for perspective), and the rest of
Petsburgh.
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