As I was reading blogs by other chicken keepers, I decided it was high time to join them with my own blog. My little flock gives me plenty to share and talk about. Although I am new to all of this and am learning daily, I’ve grown rather close to my feathered friends already.
To introduce myself, I’m a 26-yr-old female living in a small town. I’ve never owned chickens before. I spent my adolescent years in the “city,” so moving out into the country in my early 20’s was a bit of an adjustment, but one I took to a lot quicker than anyone expected. I lived with family until the summer of 2012, when I purchased my first home even farther in the country. My dad lives with me, and you’ll notice me mention him often in my posts.
In the last few months I’ve learned so much more about chickens than I realized there was to learn. The main purpose of this blog is to simply share my experiences, the sweet, the funny, the sad, and the outrageous, with whomever wishes to read about them.
I’ll start with the best place: the beginning.
Though I wanted chickens ever since I moved into my house, it was not feasible
at the time. Once winter was almost over, I started planning earnestly to get
my chicken coop built. I picked the spot I felt was best, nestled under some
young Oak trees at the very back of the yard near the wood line. Dad & I
started with the chicken wire we already had, and we stapled the wire to the
trees, using stakes to hold up the wire along the middle. A few weeks later, we
got more chicken wire, which we used along the sides above the first round of
wire to make the pen taller. Then we used the remaining wire to cover the pen. 
A friend gave me a metal frame containing 10 next boxes. Immediately, I nailed it to 2 of the trees inside the pen, quite high off the ground, and thought that was all I needed to do. Please don’t scold – again I admit I knew NOTHING about building a chicken coop when I first started this process.
Dad & I didn’t feel right about the coop, and felt something was missing, so we decided to hop on Google and see what we could find. Behold, the best website I ever encountered for information on all things “chicken:” backyardchickens.com.
Immediately, thanks to my friends at backyardchickens, I realized I hadn’t
built a coop at all. I simply had a run, and the nest boxes were in the last
place they should be. Dad quickly went to work thinking and designing the coop.
We decided to build 2 separate “houses” inside the run, versus building an
all-in-one coop. One was dedicated for the roost, and the other for the next
boxes. We also built a shelter for the water & feed. 
Two stressful weeks later, the coop was completed. Let me just say, building a coop is in no way easy, unless you are naturally inclined in carpentry.
Finally, I acquired my flock on Saturday April 27th 2013: 10 tens and a rooster at roughly 3 months old. After just 2 days, it became obvious that one of my hens was a “he,” with the possibility of a second gender mix-up.
So the following Tuesday I returned the 2 offenders & got 2 more hens. However, my flock did not take kindly to one of them, and proceeded to peck at her & ostracize her so that she couldn’t eat or be anywhere near the others. Off she went the next day & I brought back a little black game mix.
