Chicken musings

The new shed has been done for quite a while, but rehabbing of the old shed has ground to a halt. Lack of money tends to do that. We have the 2x4s needed to redo the roof, but haven't managed to get the tarpaper and roofing together yet. Also, Ray needs to get out to the new shed and do some rearranging so we can move the stuff that's been in the old shed since we moved in over to the new one to get it out of the way.

The old shed is 11x16 feet. I'm planning on building a divider down the middle, using the front half for storage of my gardening supplies and the back half for my chickens. That will give them 88 square feet, about 3 1/2 sq ft per bird if I get a 25 bird straight run order like I'm contemplating. A little tight, but since they will be free ranging during the day the coop will only be for sleeping in at night and we'll only have 25 until the cockerels are processed. I could do broilers in a separate chicken tractor, I suppose, but those things are just so darn ugly! And it seems a little cruel to deliberately breed a bird that can just keel over dead one day because their organs can't keep up with their growth. My current plan is to do a heavy assorted straight run of 25 chicks from McMurray. Since I know nothing about breeds it will give us exposure to different breeds. Ray says no roosters but at some point I am going to want one. Otherwise we will have to keep buying new chickens.