Redneck chicken condo.

Just in case you think it takes fancy equipment to have a few chickens, think again.  Chickens don't care where they live.  They're happy to poop anywhere. LOL  The newest additions to our (including DS and DDIL here!!) flock, are warmly entrenched in our basement. Thank goodness we have one. Lots of chicken raisers have brooder houses. We have this:

Hey! It's free and they're happy. The beauty of it is that once they have outgrown it and have feathered out and can go out to the big girl house, I can either burn it, or cut it up and lay it on the ground with mulch over it to use as a weed barrier, which I might do around the new fruit trees. Glamourous it isn't, I'll grant you that, but it's functional.  I cut a hole towards the bottom between the two boxes, so they can access their water or get into a cooler area in case they get too warm from the heat lamp.

This has worked out so much better than having their water near the food, because chickens are built to scratch out a living, and they instinctively scratch away at the pine shavings, which was filling up the water reservoir within a couple of hours, keeping me running down there to clean it out or refill it.  I can go for several hours now without worrying about it. Yay!  We still have five survivors, three americaunas (the blue egg layers), and two little banties, which are just the scrappiest little things. They don't take any grief from the bigger chicks, which worried me some.  There truly is something called a pecking order, but I'm thinking one of the little banties is "top dog", so to speak.  However they work it out is ok with me. They are so cute.

So, grab yourself a couple of cardboard boxes, a bag of chick starter food, some pine shavings and a few little chicks and enjoy.  They will reward you with beautiful, incredible, edible eggs in a few months. From those, you can make great noodles, which you won't be able to sell at a farmer's market. I'll be posting on that soon.
Blessings,
Brenda