Subject: Re: Hen House

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Lamantia)
Date: 12 May 1994 15:44:09 GMT

[email-masked] (Gary Hypes) writes:

>I'm just getting into chickens -- I have a rooster my neighbor couldn't
>use, and six R.I. Red pullets -- and I'm trying to build a simple hen
>house and run for them.  I've checked with the local Ag Extension folks,
>and they have lots of plans for poultry shelters:  assuming I'm going
>into commercial production, and want to raise anwhere from 40 to 4,000
>chickens.  If I can't come up with anything unique, I'll probably just 
>copy my neighbor's setup, which was put up haphazardly but simply (and 
>works VERY well).

>Any ideas, suggestions, resources, lessons-learned, etc. anyone would
>care to share about putting up a small hen-house?  (I'm in Idaho, the
>winters do get cold...)

>- Gary Hypes -

Ask a good local bookstore to come up with a book for you entitled 
"Chickens in Your Backyard".  I don't remember the author or publisher,
but if you have trouble finding it, email me and I'll get you the specifics.
It's an excellent book for raising chickens on the exact small scale you're 
talking about.

(And it doesn't take too much reading between the lines to understand what 
your phrase "I have a rooster my neighbor couldn't use" really means.  I 
too recently passed along to a [maybe now former] friend a rooster I "really 
couldn't use".  I had almost forgotten how wonderful it was not to have 
my time of waking dictated to me by a brainless poultry critter; and my 
neighbors were too polite to come to my house with torches, but judging 
by the number of "how's your rooster doing?" comments I got from them, 
I'd guess that they're not spending too much time missing Mr. WakeUp, 
either.)

-- Steve LaMantia
   Seattle, WA