Congratulations Lisa on becoming a new chicken owner. Beware...they're VERY addictive. I started off with 6, and now have 850! Like you, I also started as a shepherdess, and still maintain my mixed flock who do great with the chickens. Anyway, stuff I wish I'd known when I first started..... Make sure your nest boxes are on your DARKEST wall, and put some kind of screening/curtains in front of the nest boxes (make sure they can still get in and have air). I just went through my drawer of old dark t-shirts, and cut those up, and stapled them to the front of my home-made nest boxes - worked a treat! Make sure your roosts are HIGHER than your nest boxes, and try and construct your nest boxes so that they can be closed up at night AND so that the chickens cannot roost on top of them at night. I did NOT do this, and my chickens roost on top of my first "efforts", AND inside them, leading to constant cleaning of nest boxes, to avoid filthy conditions. In another area, the nest boxes ARE slanted, but there is a ledge of 2 x 4's behind the nest boxes which they roost on, and somehow, poop lands in the nest boxes from the back - NASTY! Don't buy the expensive "Little Giant" water fountains - the "o" ring goes out rather quickly, so they leak out, leaving the chickens without water, until you figure it out! I've had better success with the one you flip over to fill, and screw on. Easy to fill, and no "O" rings to break. Put your waterers on blocks to keep them above the litter. Hang your feeders but make sure you buy ones that the chicks won't outgrow. Plus, make sure that your chickens have GOOD ventilation/air-flow to prevent ammonia build-up, disease, etc. Free-range when safe - but be sure to lock them up at night. It's so much fun watching them catch their first bug, etc. Good luck

Hi everyone! I have raised chickens since I was little off and on and just started up again last year I live where it gets pretty cold so I have a 20'x 20' enclosure inside my barn I let them free range in the day till they go in.I have 8 nesting boxes and 16 chickens. in the winter i have a heated water dish and i put a small elec heater i keep on threw the winter at a med setting. I also chop lettuce and tomatoes, cucks and grapes, i just pick them up at the store for a cheap deal cause I take there not so good stuff. plus the scratch, oyster shell and mash. They are grea pets and each have thier own personality, they are fun I sell the eggs for 1.00 a dozen.

10 year old hens? OMG, I would personally not keep them around. No way I will keep my chickens around that long. I know they can live longer than that, but here's a statistic: "The percentage of hens over four years old that will develop ovarian cancer is 45%" I have personally pulled a huge tumor the size of a large grapefruit out of an old hen, and it wasn't even 10 years old. No way I'm gonna put my chickens through that. My chickens are not pets, they're livestock. They live a happy life part of the time in a aviary, and a few times a week they get to free range all over the backyard. They get fed plenty of healthy treats but after 3-4 years I'm replacing them with younger ones.

Hi Mike. You have obviously given your coop design lots of thought instead of rushing in blindly, but seeing as I am a bit further down the path for chickens and rabbits, I will make a few suggestions. 1. Four to five hens do not need 96 square feet of house room. I suggest you consider dividing the house into two areas of 12' x 6'. You could easily keep up to ten or twelve hens in that space (4 to 5 sq. ft each), especially if you are not keeping a rooster. 2. It sounds to me as though you need more room for your rabbits. The recommended size for a cage is about 8 sq. ft.-- either 36 x 30 inches or 24 x 48 inches. Make sure you can easily reach all the way to the back of the cage. If you cages are raised, drop down fronts provide easy access. When your does have their litters you will quickly see why the cages need to be big. A buck can get along with a slightly smaller cage, but he needs room to exercise and room to "entertain the ladies" when you bring the does to him for servicing. In Zone 8, an open sided rabbitry is a good idea, but you might want to enclose it with either lattice panels or hardware cloth. And while we are on the subject of wire, chicken wire is NOT adequate protection for either rabbits or chickens. A raccoon will tear his way right through it and so will a big dog. Half inch hardware cloth or even chain-link gives better protection. 3. If you are building your own rabbit cages, be sure to use very strong welded wire for the floors -- the kind with 1 inch x 1/2 inch mesh. Otherwise the wire will sag and your bunnies will get sore feet and hocks. 4. Why not make your "people door" entering through the rabbit side? Bunnies in cages can't escape and you will not need the separate storage area/entrance room. Feed for both can be kept in the rabbitry. 5. Give some thought to how you will deal with the rabbit manure. Bins of sawdust below the cages help a lot and you can just cover the mess with fresh sawdust until it is time to clean out. Make it easy to clean out - fresh bunny manure is heavy. (Incidentally, I have found that most of the bunnies will adapt well to a "litter box" - a dollar-store rectangular dishpan one-third full of sawdust or wood shavings. In my summer rabbitry, I let the droppings fall to the ground, but as the cages are in the porch for the winter, the boxes help a lot.) 6. You will not need a heat lamp for your chickens in Zone 8. Both rabbits and chickens will be fine as long as their house is not drafty. May have more ideas later on, but this is what comes immediately to mind, based on my own experiences. Hope some if it is helpful to you.