Anyone raise chickens?

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<p>The dogs could be a problem or not, depending on how obedient they are. One of my dogs obeyed my command to leave the chickens alone. The other chased them if she could, resulting in the inadvertent deaths of several. (I think one had a heart attack when she picked her up!)</p>

<p>A secure coop within a fenced area within a fenced yard ought to be sufficiently discouraging to coyotes, especially if you and your dogs are out in the yard some of the time. I’ve never heard of crows going after full-grown chickens, and you don’t let them out until they have feathered out. Hawks are another matter. I never did this, since we had a few hawk attempts but nothing fatal, but you can either put wire mesh over the entire top of your pen, or just criss-cross it with some wires that will make flying into it perilous.</p>

<p>Be aware that almost any pen that your chickens live in will fairly quickly become denuded of grass. Uncomposted chicken poop burns it.</p>

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<p>There are people who keep chickens as house pets. And there are companies that sell diapers for house chickens. Honest!</p>

<p>Search youtube for “Phillip fetching” to see one that has learned to fetch.</p>

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<p>If you want them to stay secure you’ll need to bury the chicken wire to a depth of about 12 inches, otherwise predators can dig their way in. Overall though, we lost more of the completely free range chickens to the jaws of our Golden Retriever than to any wild predators (and some were rescued from said jaws and made a complete recovery after looking dead) but we did bury the chicken wire and were pretty conscientious about the ones we kept enclosed. For the completely free range ones we accepted the inevitable losses. In our experience, the predator situation was exacerbated by factors such as drought - when wild prey was plentiful we had very little trouble but when that changed the predators became bolder. There were a couple of occasions when we found possums curled up in the nesting boxes and never found how they got in. As far as we could tell, possums stole eggs, raccoons killed chickens. We had chicken wire over the top of the outside enclosure - DH and I made the runs ourselves, quite a fun project (the extension was known as the chicken palace)and pleasantly challenging.</p>

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<p>BTW, regarding cute coops for sale: there is a reason why the first egg is known as the thousand dollar egg. :D</p>

<p>I was lucky in having an existing outbuilding to convert. You might also want to look into the chicken tractor concept.</p>

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<p>Our neighbors have a mobile chicken coop that they move around the lawn. The coop has an attached, enclosed run - the run also has a wire mesh floor that prevents predators from digging their way in. Coyotes come to their yard regularly, but the chicken headcount is not affected by their visits…</p>

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<p>For the benefit of fellow chicken fanciers, I have added a picture of Mahogany looking through the glass by the door as my avatar. Treats, mom!!!</p>