We’ve had our chickens for almost 3 months now and I’m so in love with them. They’re fun for our children to learn about, take care of, clean after and feed – A great way to teach them responsibility! We’ve learned so much so wanted to share some of our favorite projects/products with y’all that are interested in becoming chicken owners!
Firstly, we bought our chickens early Spring at our local ranch and home supply store Murdoch’s. They had some really healthy chicks (They also had ADORABLE ducklings! That may be a future project ;)) that were supposed to be all females which was all our city would allow us to have. (Check your local laws to see if chickens are allowed and if so, how many/what kinds!)
For their breeder box we kept them in a pack n’ play with a heating lamp clipped to the side pointed down at them to keep them toasty! We had standard feeder/waterer’s for them and their substrate was just softwood shavings (Made it easy to clean 🙂 )
Once they were aging we went looking for a chicken coop.. They are SO expensive. We checked on our local Buy, Sell, Trade pages on Facebook and asked around and got one for FREE. It was in amazing condition but was only large enough for 3 (We had 4) so my Husband built an add-on to their coop for pretty cheap *Only about $80?* and they LOVE it.
For their food we use standard pellets and I add some supplements to their water supply for an additional nutritional boost 🙂 Now.. This was what I wanted to discuss the most because I’ve had some troubles, now that they’re older and in their coop, on what feeders/waterers are the best. We’ve got some rodents nearby since we live right near a lake and worried about them getting into the hens’ food so we found some amazing feeders that hang ON the chicken wire so there’s no way for them to reach it! Product below ->
As for their waterers we’ve gone through 3 different ones before finding the one we liked! They all leaked and all got dirt in them CONSTANTLY which really wasted their expensive supplements. So after tons of trial and error I found this (pictured below) waterer which can be hung and hold a ton of water without the waste because there’s only little mini spouts that fill up when the nipple it pressed down. We have it sitting on a block so that it’s elevated but it took up too much room in the coop so I moved it to their add-on run which didn’t have as strong of wire for it to hang from.. 4 gallons is quite heavy 😉
So – Hopefully this saves some of y’all time when planning on getting chickens and feel free to message me with any questions. We love our chickies! ❥
s i m p l y k a r a l i z 