Shellybabe, the last (6th) chick hatched with a funny crook in it's neck. It's not eating much and seems sick. It's under a heat lamp in my bathroom with water and room to run around. I'm thinking it's going to either die peacefully or be a runt that I keep as my favorite pet. Poor little thing. There is no way to give it to mommy hen and the others. My hen is a great mother. And she knows how to count. When she was distracted I scooped up one baby and a few moments later she started counting, noticed one was missing and went nuts until I put the little one back down. I find that freaking amazing. Meanwhile, they are putting up with a zillion teenaged boys on a skate ramp only feet away from the henhouse. Hopefully chickens don't need peace and quiet.

Wow! we have an almost identical shed, although I think your is slightly larger! It has been our henhouse for almost six years now. Currently we have 12 hens that roost in there on a large closet pole that is strung across and a smaller perch. They are a mixed flock of banties and standards. Ours is a dirt floor though. During the dry season (about 10 months out of the year here) I leave it open dirt floor so it is easy to shovel. When we get really soaked with rain I pack it with a thick layer of straw so it is very dry on top. As for the heat, ours is shaded on the south side by trees and we keep the doors open during the day since they free range in the backyard. It is ugly though and this summer I broke down and painted the most visible areas a deep brown with rustoleum and it looks much better. As for having kids in there, mine aren't allowed in unless they are getting eggs. Their loud presence encourages the hens to not lay their eggs in there and since they free range, that means an easter egg hunt every day... Good luck and have fun.

Here's an interesting article about chickens and gardens: That's What Hens Are For Basically, hens are safe in a garden but only if you set it up to be hen-safe. If you just let them out into some random garden, they'll eat it up and destroy it. Basically, there are plants they will eat and plants they won't eat, and some plants (like beans) that they'll eat but where most of the crop is too high for them to reach. So you need to keep them away from the plants that they'll eat, excepting what you decide to let them nibble on for their health. Also, you should never leave them around seedlings/small plants, even ones that they don't eat, because their scratching can kill them; however, established plants are generally safe against scratching. In turn, the hens reward you with free weeding, bug control, and fertilizer, and what they eat in the garden significantly lowers the cost of their feed (as well as makes their eggs healthier -- hens fed greens produce much healthier eggs).

Tonight was Round Two. Arriving home from a shopping trip to Dallas, I went into the chicken coop to turn on the heat lamp to keep the keats warm overnight and there was a big old long chicken snake stretched out on the chicken roost. Of course, by the time I turned on the lamp and saw him or her, I was already past the snake and it was between me and the door, so I had to go back past the snake to exit the chicken coop. (sigh) Several "hysterical woman" phone calls later, two sets of neighbors arrived, gloves and guns in hand. (We have the world's most wonderful friends and neighbors.) One dragged that ugly old snake out of the chicken house, the other shot it, and peace and calm reigned again. I did call DH at work to tell him that his "snakeproof" chicken coop, as he has repeatedly described it since building it--most recently two days ago--is NOT snakeproof. (I wish it was.) I believe we will spend his days off attempting to do some more snakeproofing. The good news is that, for the second time in a week, a snake got into the building but not into the bird brooder cage, which DS apparently did an excellent job of snakeproofing. And, I hate to say that for fear I will jinx us and the next snake we see will be inside the cage eating keats. And, by the way, fresh, home-grown tomatoes are an excellent "thank you" to give a neighbor who comes running to rescue your keats from a big ol' bad ol' snake. I gave one neighbor a bagful and promised one to bring one to the other neighbor tomorrow after I pick tomatoes. Only six more weeks until the keats are theorectically large enough that a snake cannot crush them and eat them. Of course, it still will be a battle with the other predators, but the guineas usually can fight that battle on their own pretty well. Ada, my cousin's cat was picked up and carried away by a red-tailed hawk about 25 or 26 years ago....and then the hawk dropped the cat into a pasture and it made its own way home, a little scratched up and bloodied, but it survived. However, from what I recall, that cat pretty much stayed inside the house after that....and that cousin had a big snake problem as well, but with western diamondback rattlers.....I'd rather have the chicken snakes. Dawn P.S. If the neighbors hadn't come to our rescue, I guess Kristine and I would have shot it, but we would not have dragged it out of the chicken coop first, because we weren't going to touch it....and we didn't really want to blow a hole in the wall.