I've been keeping chickens for approx 10 years.
In this time we've had various incarnations of runs. Recycled pallets, garden sheds etc.
We started with 2 chicks, that we bought at the local Market. It was the middle of July and we didn't even have a heat lamp. We put these two little chicks on the back patio in a cardboard box with water and food and warm bedding. We weren't even sure if they would survive the night. The did and they became 2 gorgeous hens (lucky as they were unsexed), that gave us lovely eggs for about 2 years, this was enough time for us to become diehard chook lovers.
We live in a local council area that only allows 10 hens per household. At the moment we have 2 light sussex, 3 Barnvelders, 1 Whyndotte (not my favourite breed), 2 Isa Browns and one chick that is a lavender sussex.
One of our Light Sussex over the last 5 years has continually gone broodie, so this year we put 2 fertilised eggs under her and she managed to hatch one of them, so now we have one little Lavender Sussex that Floppsey is being a fantastic Mum too. It is so beautiful to watch.
The Current living arrangement we have for our girls is an Egglu. In 2016 we did a knock down rebuild and knew that where we were going to be living for 12 months would have foxes so we wanted to keep our little family of hens safe, and Egglu's are brilliant for this, yes it was tested numerous times in that 12 month period.
The Foxes came mainly in the morning and we caught them terrifing our chickens on quite a few occassions. In the end I was getting my hubby to pee on the boundary to try and keep them away.
2 years later we are living back on our block of land in our new house and the girls are very happy living in our newly planted Orchard and they have the run of this Orchard, they aren't allowed in the vege garden though unless very well supervised.
