Chicks in the City Tour 2009
Decatur Chickens Strut Their Stuff for a Good Cause
Coops on the Tour
1. Scott Pluckhahn and Keith Crosby
Description: 5'x7' henhouse with an attached 7'x12' run. We started with day-old chicks nearly 8 years ago and still have several of our original girls! Two years ago, we helped a 3rd grade class with a life science lesson by hatching 20 eggs. These are the newest additions to our flock. We currently have: 1 Speckled Sussex rooster, 1 Welsummer hen, 2 Americauna hens, 1 Barred Rock hen, 1 Rhode Island hen, 3 Buff Orpington hens.
The building that used to house our pigeons will find new use this spring, when we help another school group hatch ducks, two of which will stay on Gordon Street. If all goes as planned, we will have a small flock of ducklings for the tour.
2. Amy and Jason Cattanach
Description: "Coop Sweet Coop" is what the kids have named it, and our 7 chicks are calling it home. We converted the fort/slide section of our outdoor play set into a 4 ft. x 4 ft. coop with a 12 ft. covered run area. The kids weren't ready to give up the swings yet, so we've kept those. We have 7 chickens (2 Buff Orpingtons, 2 Barred Rocks and 3 Easter Eggers) that hatched the first week of December and were delivered by our mailman. They are quickly growing up, and we anxiously await our first eggs this spring.
3. Tiffanie & Brendan McHale
Description: 4 mixed breed hens that are free roaming whenever possible. My husband built them a shed style 4 x8 (50 sq ft) wood coop with a tin roof and screened in front. Inside there are four dividers about 4 feet high for nests and on the far wall are stair stepped roosting branches. The feed bucket hangs underneath the nesting boxes and the water feeder sits next to it.
4. Jerilynn Bedingfield and Peter Aaro-Hansen
Description: Our chicken house/yard is home to 10 laying hens. We have a variety of breeds Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpington, Dominicks, a Leghorn, Black Australorpe and two mixed breeds. The yard/house is located in a private side yard of the property secluded so far from birds of prey. The fencing and some of the building materials are recycled right off the street. The house is attatched to a garden shed.
5. Martha & Chris Moore-Keish
Description: With a desire to dabble in low budget urban agrarianism, we built a 14' by 7' dog run and converted a doghouse to house our three Barred Rocks and three Golden Laced Wyandottes. The birds enjoy the freedom of free-ranging, in spite of the Red Tail Hawks that loom overhead, in the family's extensive yard. One of the unique features in this coop is the creative use of recycled soccer balls to assist in the run off of rain water.
6. Arlen Gray, Gregory Wiseman Family and Vincent Lewis
Description: Tucked away in the large back yard of 217 Mead Road is a three-household cooperative chicken operation. There are some eight mixed-heritage chickens who lay wonderfully colored eggs - brown, ivory, and blue ones. We built the simple coop together and share maintenance, shopping and enjoying this delightful activity. Talk to us about getting started!
7. David Florence and Kids at Waldorf School
Description: This is a coop made up of a dog kennel 8'x8'x6' for the fence, bamboo for the roof beams to hold up hardware cloth over the top to keep hawks and owls out. The nesting boxes were donated by a friend of the school, and we use homemade wooden carts to complete the shelter when things get brutally cold. We keep the floor of the coop covered with straw and take the straw litter. and compost it immediately with all the lunch scraps from the school.
Our new coop is an A frame that we designed after perusing many designs. This one should have it all: safety, warmth, ventilation, mobility for up to 6 free-ranging birds. We're about halfway finished building this, and it looks like a very good design.
8. Scott and Debbie Hollonbeck
Description: Hollonbeck Coop - Operation Chickens. After 9 years of dreaming, I finally built my Chicken run/coop built in 2008. We have 6 named Plymouth Barred Rock chickens that wear color-coded ankle bracelets to tell them apart. To protect them form the hawks we build a bamboo trellis that lays over the top of the run. We enjoy eating the protein rich eggs, feeding them leftovers, fresh grass, and knowing that we are changing the environmental impact of our eating habits by choosing to keep birds for eggs.
9. Oakhurst Community Garden Project
The 9 chickens and 1 bantam rooster are daily tended by Team Chicken - a group of 6 families that come twice a day to let the chickens out, feed them, close them up at night, and collect eggs in exchange. The chickens are central to the fun that visitors have when visiting the Garden. Learn what it takes to and the rewards of taking care of a flock of chickens cooperative style.
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