Many years ago we kept chickens in the old chicken coop deep in the back yard. Eventually the racoons ate all the chickens, but not before we had a summer where we ate fresh eggs every day and sold two dozen eggs a week.

We bought the chickens from the Sears Farm catalog. I seem to remember that they even had bees in the Spring. We got a call from the post office a few days after we bought them. There were two dozen live chicks in a box waiting for us. Actually there were 25, but one chick died. The rest lived until they were eaten about 10 months later.

We sold or gave away most of the roosters. I suspect that they went right into someone’s pot, and in one case the rooster might have died in some Voodoo ritual.

We wound up with 8 hens that we kept plus a rooster we named Big Red. Big Red was the last to go after a raccoon broke into the shed and killed the last hens. I stopped locking Big Red in the shed at night and one night we heard him screaming and then nothing but feathers.

I decided then not to have chickens again.

The Hennebunkport from BackyardChickens.com

Now Erica has decided that, after 25 years, that it is time to try again.

I am looking at Chicken Coop Plans. Erica likes one called the Hennebunkport. It is a 6×7 foot shed about 5 feet high. It is designed to hold half a dozen chickens, but can probably fit more. It looks very easy to build.

As soon as Erica decides where I should put it, I will buy the 2×6’s for the base and see if I can make a start. There should be 4 or 5 good days between now and the end of March to work on it.

I am going to call my version “The Taj Ma-hen”.