LOL, Sally, that looks like fun and I'll watch for it.

Annie

Austin has an annual Chicken Coop Tour to encourage people to have backyard chickens. I offered to take my little flock on the tour, but my hens prefer to stay home and eat bugs. They don't socialize much . . . .

I can't wait to see pictures! I've wanted to keep a few hens (3 or 4) for years, but knowing the brain capacity of chickens, am pretty sure they'd drown themselves in our backyard pond. I'm not opposed to a chicken coop, but after the winter we just had, am glad I didn't have to try to keep them warm. I just love the fresh eggs though, and enjoyed feeding scraps to the chickens. I'll just content myself with buying eggs at the Farmer's Market, and live vicariously through Sally's pictures.

Claire, my Rhode Island Reds survive the winter nicely in the milk house part of our old dairy barn, the cattle and horses have free range of the bottom part, they come and go in the winter as they please. None of it is heated, so they do require fresh water daily in the winter because it freezes but there is no heat source. I am considering getting a heated waterer so they don't have to be watered twice a day. That's why I have Rhode Island Reds, they can nicely survive Michigan's winter as long as they have shelter. They even go outside on sunny winter days and run about in the snow. In fact, I don't know anyone that has a heated chicken coop or barn.

We do have a pond and in the winter a full 100 gallon stock tank with a heater so the water is always "open", but I've never had a chicken drown, or even go into the tank or the pond, so I don't think you have to worry about your chickens drowning either.

The biggest issue with chickens running about free in a yard is predators. Everything from the neighbor's dogs to coyotes, hawks, fox. Skunks like to sneak into the coop and steal eggs. For the protection of my own personal flock they only are allowed to run about while I'm there to supervise (and besides, they peck only the ripe tomatoes if they are unsupervised in the garden) and they are always locked into their coop at night when they go inside to roost.

All of mine are tame enough to be picked up and will run into their fenced enclosure if I pick up a bucket and call them, so it's easy enough to keep them confined when I'm not there to protect them.

Annie

Annie, our coop wasn't heated either, except in the spring when we had chicks and turned on the brooder lamp for them. We always put down at least six inches of sawdust, which would go back into the garden at the end. I just remember putting heavy mil plastic on the windows to keep the wind out, so I guess that's what I was referring to. Since that was then and this is now, I don't think there's any chance of our having chickens in the middle of the 'burbs!

It seems like we always find some young, small critter in the spring that's drowned in our pond, whether it's a bunny, rodent or bird, so I was just doing some virtual anticipating of what seems to be a normal episode for us. We do keep heated water for the birds when our pond is netted for the winter, so we can maintain our bird sanctuary when the weather's cold.

The chickens are a moot point here as much as I'd be willing to change that. I'm happy to have ducks that fly in, and back out again. (Hosing off the surfaces where they leave their calling cards is not one of my favorite jobs.) Our garden is very small! In fact, we killed the grass out and put down a mulch path around the oak tree instead, just to keep maintenance down. (The rest of it looks pretty wild, which is why a friend refers to it as a game preserve.) The ducks have been coming up on the deck and hanging out. When we go outside, they swim to the middle of the pond where we have a bubbler fountain going in a rock. That's where they feel safe.

I do envy your fresh eggs; that's what I miss most. Enjoy your biddies; I know I would!

Okay, I'm finally back. I tried and tried to log on this morning, but for some reason, the forum wasn't working.

DH took the pictures. The first house was the home of the organizer of the tour, and her coops were so cute, as were her chickens, peacock, turkey and goats - all in the middle of East Dallas just maybe five miles or so from downtown. She had cut tin in the shape of chicken feathers for siding of her coops.

Not all the coops were as fancy, but they did the job. However, this one had curtains!

We saw fancy chickens and pretty chickens, but this was the silliest chicken.

Here's one posing for her picture, looking proud.

Some more...

Hope you enjoyed the tour as much as I did. One of the hosts said she thinks at least a thousand people went on the tour!

Sally

Oh Wow, what beautiful birds! Especially the last one! I wonder what kind of chicken that is...

Thanks for the tour Sally. I enjoyed it immensely, especially the chicken coop with chicken feather tin siding. That's quite a building! Was there a purpose to the curtains in the coop?

Oh my, curtains in the chicken coop, LOL, those are some spoiled rotten chickens!

That first bird with the "wild hair" looks like it could be a Polish, and the last one maybe a Gold Hamburg type, the coloring is right and so is the comb type.

Claire, I'm always finding birds, squirrels, mice, voles in the swimming pool in the spring, but never as the year progesses. I've never, ever had a chicken drown in the pond, though. Maybe they really aren't as dumb as people think...

Annie

The lady with the curtains in her coop decided to put them up to give the chickens a dark place to go, and to protect them from the cold in the winter. She closes the curtains at night. Their nest boxes are behind the curtains. In the winter she adds a thicker layer to the curtains, but I don't remember what the material is she uses then - I think plastic.

DH said the lady told him the last chicken is a bearded Belgian D'Uccle, but she wasn't sure. That was what she was told it was.

Sally

Sally, now you say that, I do notice the beard, but I thought it was kind of big, usually hens weigh about a pound and a half, they are Bantam type birds.

It's hard to tell how big or small a chicken is in a picture, LOL, but I love the colors on that one.

The middle looks like an Isa Brown, a prolific and popular brown egg layer, and I always think the feathers on their breasts look like dragon scales. The others probably are nice fat and happy Barred Rocks, another breed I really like, they're very hardy and cold tolerant here.

A chicken coop tour, who da thunk it?

Annie

What adorable coops and what gorgeous birds. That was a great idea for a tour. You must not have foxes down there. Anyone who has tried to raise backyard chickens around here has seen them quickly become dinner for a fox!

Annie, it was a small bird. That's a girl maybe 8 or 9 years old tops holding her.

Actually, there are foxes here, but coyotes are more of a threat, along with raccoons and opossums. These coops all looked pretty sturdy. The organizer, who's also a builder of homes for people and chickens, says if she can't build a predator proof coop she's gonna stop building coops. She's pretty confident.

Sally