Urban Chickens....

....More like Suburban chickens in our case. Backyard flocks, backyard chickens...what? Yes it's kind of a trend right now. Families taking on chickens for fresh eggs with out the farm. I have been researching this for a while now and was pretty convinced we could do this. Of course my main obstacle was my husband. I though it may take a while to convince him on this one (I have had some crazy irrational ideas in the past!) but he was pretty easy to get on board! He comes from a rural, farm, small town part of the country so he knew quite a bit about the process.

So here is what we did....well I did until it came to actually building things
-Intensive research on chickens....pros, cons, the amount of work involved, basic maintenance, etc. I spent   hours on the Internet and checked out several books from the library.
- decided on 3 hens (females) St. Louis Co. allows 4 chickens without needing permits
  Three birds, Three different breeds for three little boys! I wanted the chickens to all look very different so they could tell them apart!
-spent a ridiculous amount of time determining what "breeds" of chickens we wanted.
-spent even more time researching chicken coops, free chicken coop plans, and size requirements.
   Took a trip to Matt's hometown where he and his dad built our personally designed...Chicken Coop! - the best part the only cost to us were some hinges and locks...we used all reclaimed materials found in my in-laws barn! Pictures to come!

So the coop is soon on it's way via my father in-law, my chicks have been ordered (from mypetchicken.com) and will arrive the last week of February ... I'll keep you updated along the way!

Day old chicks - like what we'll see in our mail box soon!

Breed #1 Rhode Island Red

Breed #2 Plymouth Rock

Breed #3 Delaware


The Garden Ark Chicken Coop - which we based our own plans off.


P.S - No we DO NOT plan on eating our chickens! We think this will be a great way to get the kids involved and imagine they will become more like pets....that pay their own way!