Home Sweet Home

The past few weeks has been a blur pf packing and unpacking and we’re not even close to settled in yet. But that hasn’t stopped me from doing some major chicken coop shopping.

Matt thinks we should keep any chickens in a run to keep them safe from predators, but we have two huge enclosures already set up, so I think our future chickens should be able to free range as much as they want during the day.

From what I read, one of the ways to keep free range chickens safe, is to have a rooster in your flock. But being as we’re so new to the neighborhood, I think keeping a rooster right away might be pushing it.

So, my initial plan was to use some sort of baseball netting to cover the enclosure, so we wouldn’t have to worry about hawk attacks. However, I do think, at least for now, that there’s probably enough bushes and tree cover to sufficiently protect the chickens from hawks.

Being that I’m so lazy, I’m hoping the chickens will clear most of the weeds in the enclosure,so I don’t have to do it. Once that happens though, we might need to make sure they have some overhead protections, like the baseball netting.

Other than hawks, my main concern is that we have is a large number of feral cats that like to hang out in our backyard. Because of this, I’m considering making sure the enclosure is covered in Hardware Cloth that’s more likely to keep predators out. Since cat’s are sneaky, it won’t be able to keep them out, but it might make it a big enough hassle for the cats to deter them. Also, it’s probably better to get larger chickens that small cats are less likely to attack, which means no more Bantams.