The great chicken escape

My chickens found their way through the neighborhood today. It would seem I didn’t manage to remove all escape routes from the coop I had built. They were all over. You can imagine 27, 3 week old chicks running amuck. I did, however, manage to save 25 of them. We lost two because an unknown animal had killed one and another broke its leg and we had to put it down. I know it may seem a little girly but I hated doing it.

We thought we had lost another one that had escaped but it was found on our front steps like it was waiting for the bus to move out of town.


Even though I thought I had made sure there were no escape points for them they managed to find one I missed. So when you build a chicken coop you need to check and recheck all possible or it may become disastrous for you, I was very lucky this time.


Building the chicken coop was easy I got my idea from different places in advertisements and had extra cedar fencing boards lift over so I decided it was time to get some chickens. All I needed was time to build the coop.


I built my coop in about 3-4 months simply because I work a lot of hours and sometimes it is very hard to get time to GET-R-DONE. If I had the time I probably could have had it done in a weekend. Tractor supply had all the wiring I needed in addition of a few screws and some other supplies. I thank you Lowes for all my roofing supplies.


Now my chicken coop was not meant for 25 chickens, it was meant for a maximum of 10. I had to order the minimum to get a good price for the chickens which was about $2.33 each. They gave me two free chickens also one I think was by accident.


All is well however almost all my chickens are safe and secure and they are very friendly. They are very eager to jump into your hand and eat whatever you may have for them. They go through the food fast I am on the third bag and they will be 4 weeks old 7-11-2011.


I ordered the day old chicks from Meyer in Polk, Ohio. They hatched on Monday and arrived on Tuesday. Pretty quick delivery even though the chicken farm told me I would have to pick them up from the post office. The post office delivered them in due course on my porch step and we immediately put them under a heat lamp and put food and water in their box. After about 2 weeks we put them in the coop. they have been happy ever since.