Up front I'll admit to a strong bias towards chickens in the urban garden. Chickens literally bring a lot to the table as small livestock go: they don't need a lot of space, eat fairly low-cost food (particularly if feed them select chicken scraps and let them freerange to find their own forage), and they pay you back with high-quality eggs and high-nitrogen compost stock. And of course their bodies are made out of chicken meat, so they're ultimately recyclable, if you have the desire and heart for the job. However you look at it, chickens rank high on the cost vs. benefit scale, and increasingly, keeping a few hens in a backyard coop is perfectly legal in some municipalities. If you're lucky enough to live in such a place, I highly encourage you to take the plunge.
Chickens themselves are pretty cheap. I think I paid something like US$2.50 each for our little Ameracana chicks last April. You can lay out more cash for the posh accessories, such as feeders and watering stations, and each have their pros and cons. But the biggest potential outlay is in housing, and here your options and potential expenses are limitless. On this subject, biddies aren't really picky. Their hard requirements are safety from predators, protection from inclement weather and cold drafts, a roost to sleep on and a private place to lay their eggs. Beyond that, a broad range of structures will serve the purpose of housing. On one ends of the scale, a friend of mine kept a couple of Leghorns in a heavy tent he constructed out of tarps and PVC pipe, and birds were perfectly happy for nearly two years until they were murdered in the night by marauding raccoons. On the other end are the truly plush coops that cost as much as a good used car and are festooned with enough gingerbread, window boxes and other ornamental gimcrackery to embarrass even the most enthusiastic doll house builder.
I took the middle ground with our coop. I wanted something that I could build myself, that would be sturdy enough to keep the birds safe from raccoons and other predators, and would give them fresh air and sun without including a run. Also, we were going to have look at the thing, so I wanted it to be fairly attractive (within my modest abilities), without going over the top, design-wise. The final result:
The building is 8'x8', which at 64 square feet is small enough not to require a building permit where we live. It's divided into two 4'x8' sections, one inner section toward the back which includes the roost, the water/food stations and nest boxes, and the outer section with a screened front where I throw supplementary food and generally let the birds show themselves off. I chose not to build a run for two reasons: I wanted the birds to be able to move from inside to outside in safety without my intervention, and I didn't want to deal with mud and chicken-specific pathogens building up in the soil. I may have overthought this part, but the design is built to accommodate a run if I change my mind in the future.
In upcoming posts I'll walk through the construction of the building, and try to pass on some lessons learned in the process.
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