I have no idea why I want to raise chickens so badly.
Ever since I saw chickens the first time at the county fair, I have longed for chickens. They’re beautiful!
Yes, I could conceivably be rewarded with fresh, organic eggs from my very own free-range chickens. And yes, I think they will be fascinating—even amusing—to watch. But the desire goes beyond my culinary and entertainment needs. It’s something deeper, more visceral, than that.
Hey, I think I’m a farm girl! I’m gonna git me some overalls and a straw hat!
People keep looking at me as if I’ve grown antlers when I tell them I’m planning a chicken coop. They are absolutely incredulous when I tell them we’re hiring an architect to design said coop. I can hardly wait to see the architect’s reaction when we tell him we want him to design A CHICKEN COOP!
To be fair, it’s not JUST a chicken coop. It’s a combination garden shed and chicken coop. I want clerestory windows. And a cupola. And window boxes. I want it to merge seamlessly with my Colonial theme garden. And I want it to be beautiful!
I want what Martha has—a Palais de Poulet!
My husband is, amazingly, on board with this little fantasy. He has even found the builder and put his detail-oriented mind to work combing through all the chicken books I’ve collected to put together an initial design for the architect’s input. I have contributed bunches of sketches and photographs of my dream garden shed/chicken coop.
Harry’s Chicken Palace Plan
The idea is that one side will be the chicken palace while the other side will be my garden shed. They will be connected with a door so that I can store the chicken supplies on the garden side and access them easily.
I can finally move my riding mower into more appropriate quarters, hang my tools on cleverly designed pegs, have a garden potting bench and even some bins for bulk supplies. I am all a-tingle just thinking about it.
Now I’m thinking about chicken names. Of course, I have to wait and see what kind of personalities they have. It would be cruel to mis-name a chicken, right?
How about politician names? Dick Cheney and George Bush? Nah. Not enough women’s names—yet.
So how about Hollywood names? Lucy and Ethel? Marilyn Monroe? Betty Davis? Paris Hilton? Would you name a chicken Paris Hilton?
Help me out here!
Hi! I'm Robin Ripley author of Wisdom for Home Preservers, published by Taunton Press. I am also co-author of Grocery Gardening. Bumblebee is about my life in rural Maryland, my garden and my love of food, my little dogs and pet chickens. You can follow me on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. Thank you for visiting!
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Oh my gosh… a Chicken Palace. I am so happy to be able to just be in on the planning. Wow I am just so happy for you.
As to names. I wouldn’t bless a chicken with the name Paris unless one appeared particularly vain and strutted around. I like the old fashioned names, Hilda, Gertrude, Miriam, Lisa. tee hee… You are going to have too much fun with this one girl. I am just green with envy… A Chicken Palace. Yep I need to buy a lottery ticket…
Hey Robin,
If you’d asked me 5 years ago if I would consider owning chickens, I would have told you where to put it. And now, I’m excited to see folks like you and I interested in chickens! It’s great that your local area permits them, alas I am in the middle of the ‘burbs and wouldn’t be looked upon too kindly (although ALL of my neighbors’ unstable dogs can bark all day long…)
Keep us posted on the progress of your Chicken Palace!
Katie at GardenPunks
Lisa – Hah! You’re right about Paris. Not only would the chicken have to be particularly vain, she would also have to be skinny and extremely unproductive!
Hey Katie – I would prefer to hear clucking chickens than a barking dog any day. And I have barking dogs!!! Can’t wait until they meet the chickens. Don’t worry. The chickens will be able to kick their little tiny butts.
–Robin (Bumblebee)
I would love to raise chickens, too. We’re not at a point where we can do that. Maybe in the near future. Love your chicken palace plans!
Oh Robin, I’m so jealous! I want chickens, too! My aunt says I don’t, because she says they’ll ruin our gardens. But I still think it would be fun to have them. Our neighbors do, and they visited us this fall. LOL. Gorgeous things!
You should see Tracy DiSabato-Aust’s chicken coop. (Garden book author.) Ooh-la-la, those chickens live better than most people. Ha!
I’ve had chickens off and on for 18 years. Just remember to make your chicken palace easy to clean. Chickens get chicken (keep this clean) manure EVERYWHERE. Also, make sure you have an automatic waterer (which if it gets cold will freeze.) Once when I was pregnant, I hauled water up to the chickens for several days in a row. Thank the Lord I don’t live in Canada. That said, the eggs are heavenly. I don’t name my chickens, well at least not most of them. Also, read A Very Small Farm by William Paul Winchester. He has a farm in OK and loves his chickens. Great writer. His dad is an English Department Head at a university.
Hi – LOL – this was me a few years back!!!! You won’t regret keeping chickens: lots of highs, some lows (but you’ll get through it), and they teach you lots about life (believe me!).
As for names, our first girls were posh birds named after the ladies they uncannily resembled – a Black Orpington (Nina Simone – diva), a Buff Orpington (Fergie – the golden haired royal one), a Partridge Cochin (Dame Vivienne Westwood – who else would wear a tailored tweed bustle) and a Black Cochin (Queen Victoria – shiny black crinoline and bloomers!). Sadly we no longer have our quartet of grande dames.:(
But last spring we got out new hens – known collectively as "the under-gardeners", Ruby, Dawn, Sylvie and Phoebe. Four ‘French Maran x a dash of Rhode Island Red’ hybrids with big characters and lots of energy – you’re welcome to come a say hello to them on my blog and they’ll show you their deluxe chalet on wheels!
Celia
x
You do realize that by combining the two functions in one building, your garden shed is going to smell like chicken poop, don’t you? And chickens can easily uproot seedlings or (sniff!) snap trillium stems if they are scratching where you don’t want them to.
Of course I am all for building palaces, don’t get me wrong, but what Kathy says is beyond true. I would never ever consider combining chicken housing with anything else, even if you do have needs for housing tools and mowers and seedlings! So I suggest a solid wall between the two needs if you must build one building. You can always walk outside and around to get the mower.
Also, our chicken coop is palatial for the few amount of feathered friends that we have. I suggest more is more, as on occasion the weather can keep them inside, and it’s better that they have enough room to scratch and peck and perform all their other chicken-y tasks.
Oh, and Robin? All our girls are named after our grandmothers, great grandmothers, great great grandmothers…on my own, I couldn’t have come up with names like Maude and Letha and Verloe.
I’m going to second all the chicken poop talk based on my experiences cleaning my friend Terry’s chicken "palace". I’d make it so you could hose that sucker down.
Chicken names: StoveTop, Stuffing, Almondine
GIggle giggle…I understand where you’re coming from on chicken palaces and names. We didn’t have a palace as such; the chickens went outdoors each day to their pen, and inside at night to a raccoon-proof roosting house, a stall in the barn near horse and idiot-donkey. Their names were Shirley, Myrna, Bad-Chicken (she was the escape artist) and Madison, the very handsome rooster. Shirley and Myrna were named after two local women who were….errrr….not the brightest of lights, and those two chickens weren’t either. Bad-chicken on the other hand was very clever. We don’t have chickens now, and I miss them….might be tempted to have a couple again…you keep posting about them and the temptation will increase!
Hi All,
Great and interesting advice. I will do more research on the idea of combining the garden shed/chicken coop functions and how that might work. I will note, however, that I don’t actually plan to spend copious amounts of TIME in the garden shed.
LOVE the names suggestions!
Angela – as usual you are a bad girl. Stovetop is not a good name for a chicken!
–Robin (Bumblebee)
Name them if they are going to be pets, but don’t name them if you are ever going to say "Off with their heads!" If you just want them as layers, what are you going to do when they stop laying? After the first couple of years, egg production drops dramatically. Are you going to run an old folks home for non-laying chickens? Are you going to give them away (good luck)? Or are you going to make chicken stew?
I am fine with keeping chickens as pets. Just be sure in your own mind that that’s what you want to do. Once upon a time, dogs and cats had to earn their keep, but in our affluent civilization that’s no longer the case. It doesn’t have to be the case with chickens, either, though it is more difficult to find a chicken that wants to be friends with you.
Amy Stewart named her chickens after wives of American presidents. Her chickens are most definitely pets. She’s even taken them to the vet, which would be laughed to derision amongst old-time farmers around here.
I am admiring your pland and wish you succeed with it! I will b very interested to watch it 🙂
I am looking forward to see the plans growing 🙂
We’ve already named the three chicks we’re getting (layers, not meat): Henrietta, Egglectra, and Quiche.
Thanks Kathy – I believe I WILL name them, since they will be pets first, layers second and never dinner. The old farmers can laugh their heads off for all I care. If I want to run a chicken hotel or old chicken home, it seems that’s my right.
Hi Ewa — Good to hear from you again! Thanks for visiting!
And Annette – Very cute chicken names. However will I decide when the time comes?
–Robin (Bumblebee)
I had free range chickens a couple of years ago, before I moved here to my dream home. One thing I will say- we never had bugs! They ate all the bugs, we didn’t have chiggers, ticks, misquitos, nothing. I loved watching them in the yard, and they left the garden alone. At some point I would love to build a building like yours and have chickens again, our tiny town still allows them in town, if pened.
Robin,
I enjoyed reading about Harry’s Chicken Palace Plan for your dream garden shed/chicken coop.Your chickens will be most appreciative for all the effort put into this.
Names that come to mind are:
Lucky Kentucky,Wishbone,Chicken Little,Chicken Scratch, Chicken Feed, Super Chicken, and of course Egglay.
Have fun and enjoy raising your chickens.
jessie
I think you’ll enjoy this experience. I was raised on a farm and we always had chickens. We gathered the eggs (little ones from the poults) and nice ones from the older (and crotchety) hens. 😉 And I agree that if you’re going to use chickens for food, you might not want to name them. My mom would get leghorns, but always a couple of exotic ones, too. 🙂
Robin,
You’ve gotten a lot of great advice here. I’m not quite as concerned about having a chicken house/garden shed as some. Having some some childhood years on a farm, I don’t object to smells at all, and in fact in an airy henhouse, I don’t think there is much smell. Do beware of having the henhouse close to the garden. That can cause disaster.
We raise some chickens for food, some for eggs, but we never cull the egg layers – they just go into a type of retirement – sans names.
Robin,
Ya’ll will enjoy your
chicks. I’ve had them for
about five years.
Put your roost facing
north better for the critters.
Try peacocks also if you
can…
Good luck,
Chiclady
What an awesome post. I learned a lot. You have such a beautiful blog. The design is very clever. Hope you get your chickens.
I realize that I’m a little belated in reading this post, but I’ve been looking into raising ducks, so I’ll have to hunt through the rest of your blog to see if the Palais de Poulet is now a reality, and if so, how you and the chickens are getting along 🙂
Hi Robin,
How did you chicken palace turn out? I am designing one for my backyard and I like the idea of the garden shed combo. Do you have any photos of the end result? Is there anything you would do differently? Thanks for your feedback…
You should definitely check out an automatic chicken waterer. I’ve found that chicken life without them is just plain messy — it used to break my heart to check on my chickens and find them with poop in their water. No more!
Hi,
Nice detailed post, i would like to add that the coop that is built should always be larger than the actual size required. It helps the chickens to move freely within the coop and thus have some sort of exercise. I would also like to add that you must plan for the number of birds you want to keep, as well as possible expansion. We added too many to our flock and ended up with zero eggs and sick chickens. The correct amount of yard and coop space is vital for healthy animals! I leave at least 2 square foot of coop space per bird, and 3-4 square feet of yard now!
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