I’m playing with the idea of getting some of this too…
https://www.premier1supplies.com/poultry/fencing.php?fence_id=96
I have 50 something layers right now. Brown & Black sex links. Very good producers.
I have 4 egg customers, supply my in-laws with free eggs and have all that I need and any extras I hard boil, smash up and feed back to the chickens.
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I’ve had chickens since 2009, but have decided I’m done with them now. I’ve had as many as six at a time and the last batch of 5 was new in 2017. I’m down to one chicken, my Easter Egger. She is a largish bird who lays large green eggs, sometimes double yolkers. She was always the first to start laying in the spring, and also the first to stop laying for the year. She’s now 5 years old and I think I got about a dozen eggs from her this year. I’m just kind of tired of keeping chickens alive and providing liquid water in the winter with no electricity in the coop, all for a bunch of eggs I give away more than use.
Other breeds I’ve had included golden comet/red sexlink, golden laced wyandote, black australorp, California Grey, and cuckoo maran. This picture shows my 2017 batch. The light colored one on the right is the Easter Egger, and is a color I haven’t seen much in that breed. From back to front is the cuckoo maran, red sex link, black australorp, golden laced wyandote and the easter egger. Two died by raccoon, and two by other causes. (that flimsy fence in the picture is just around my garden area, and not anything I expected to protect chickens. They had 1/2" hardware cloth and a roof over their usual coop and run).
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I’ll try to link the video for you. It’s currently on the game camera, and I’m a computer dinosaur about doing practically everything other than typing and pressing send. We have a selection of chicken eating predators here, so chickens are only allowed out when we are around. We have cougars,had a juvenile that tore apart a small cage with four new adolescent chickens getting big enough to go in with the main flock. Two survived that. The cat didn’t, though we regretted his removal. Other than that, we’ve had a mink, who killed a couple. I went looking for him under the chicken house, and there he was, staring back at me, considering taking my nose off… They don’t back down from a human. But we haven’t had him back since. We kinda thought that this most recent attack had to be a mink or weasel type critter, because of the size of the hole being so small. We SHOULD have a yard dog, a guardian dog here, but we don’t. We have three house cats who are also fair game for a lot of these predators, and we have previously lost cats, usually to coyotes. But we watch out for them as much as we can. One current cat is ex feral, so he knows about coyotes. The other two are ignorant and arrogant. We have a lot of Eagles, both bald and golden… No trouble from them yet with chickens or cats. No racoons here, so that’s a bonus lol!
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Weird 
My surviving EE, Bunny (had 2, 1 - Peeps - just keeled over one day 
) is my friendliest hen.
She knows what container has the BOSS (her crack) & demands her share Here! Now!
Her eggs are pale blue & near commercial Large size.
She surprised me by being 1st to start laying after the moult.
The oldest (3?4?) is a BR - Barb: for Barred Rock B*tch - & wants nothing to do with me.
The younger Wyandotte - Laura, named for a friend fond of her Chardonnay 
- agrees.
BR’s “brother” < same age, got from the same flock of BRs, also not friendly, but not a badass rooster either. He’s P.T./Petey for Pretty Tail.
ETA: My History with Chickens
Got my first 5 in 2009, 6wk pullets
2 Delaware’s -Noodle & Salad
2 Black sexlinks - Xtra Crispy & I forget the other food-related name
1 Houdan - Misty Cologne (named at the request of a friend for his Drag name) she was my pet hen. Contrary to breed, she’d ride on my arm like a Pirates parrot.
A couple years later I added 2 day-old chicks from a friend of a friend’s son’s huge flock of mutts.
1 became a Leghornish hen, the other a gorgeous rust & cream rooster.
Named for the friends: Connie & Sgt T
All freeranged my 5ac, putting themselves to bed at dusk & keeping me & friends in eggs.
Until the day I came home to find Sgt T & 2 hens dead by ???
One was Misty 
Rooster was most torn up, he’d fought for his girls 
I confined the survivors to the fenced yard attached to the coop.
That weekend I heard them fussing & saw a big red fox down by my barn.
Mystery solved.
Got 6 replacements from an Amish friend.
5 white mutts with some black & 1 black hen.
Named her Bette, the others the Harlettes.
A couple years later, attrition, a raccoon & a hawk had me down to 2 white hens.
I got 6 free 6wk BRs.
3 became roosters. Kept the meekest (PT), sent 2 to auction.
Then lost 2 in a week to hawks.
At which point I decided freeranging was Out for my hens.
Friend gifted me 4 at point-of-lay:
Buff Orp - Golda (Meier)
Black Australorp - LJ (for Leslie Jones)
Lavender Orp - Bluey (for @Bluey 
) - became a rooster 
EE - Bunny
Golda developed a tumor that eventually affected her QOL & had me cull her.
Bluey died of something that progressively crippled him, another PTS.
I added Peeps & Laura 2yrs ago.
LJ was killed by ?? that got in the coop one might I was late closing it off from the yard (Mea Culpa)
Peeps was NQR one morning, dead by 4.
This Spring I plan on adding 2 or 3 pullets.
I’d like colored layers, Olive Eggers or Marans or another EE.
I’m so sorry for those who have lost chickens to predators. It seems to be a case of when, not if. We have five, one each:
Ameraucana (light grey) - blue egg
Black Copper Marans (black) - dark brown egg
Rhode Island Red (orange) - light brown egg
Silverudd Isbar (black/white mix) - green egg
Leghorn (blue/brown mix, also the resident ditz) - white egg
So we know when each of them is laying, which is convenient, and we can tell them all apart. We keep them in a solid-wood coop (which DH insulated) with an automatic door opener and a cozy coop radiant heater mounted up by their favourite roost.
We added a droppings board under the roosts over the summer, and while we usually use flax bedding (it’s so easy to sift through to collect rogue droppings) we’ve just laid down a layer of straw this week to help keep the coop as warm as possible over the winter. The run has a sand footing, again we just added straw over top to try and make winter easier on them.
They come out to free range only when supervised, but are quite happy digging through the straw to find scratch or coax mealworms out of the special chicken toy we bought them 
It took so much research and then time to modify the design of the coop for our application and work out, as non-handy persons, how to get the several-hundred-pound structure from the front yard to the backyard without any machines — and then how to build the enclosed run around it once positioned in the yard. The coop itself was painted and stained (which required conditioning the wood, staining, and then sealing). It looks lovely but would I do it again?! Probably not. I may have lost my sanity in the process.
Two of them just started laying this week which has been pretty exciting, we acquired them as chicks this June. This year has definitely been the Year of the Chicken for us 
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We’ve had chickens for 14 years. Started with a dozen hens: Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, California Giants, Sicilian Buttercups. Had DD sell eggs as a business/learning experience.
The chicken business expanded over the years, at one time we have over 100, right now, we have ~ 80. There’s a pen of Buff Orpingtons, a pen of Easter Eggers and a pen of Golden Comets. We started phasing out other breeds for laying in favor of the Golden Comets, they are incredibly reliable layers and are much smaller than the Orps or the Barred Rocks.
I have two incubators going most of the spring and sell chicks from a couple of days old to 6 - 8 weeks, and I keep hatching as long as people are buying. I made a mistake this year and didn’t hold enough back for us; I will have to buy young birds in March.
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I’ve had chickens for 28 years, in addition to the ones we had when I was growing up or when I was working on a guest ranch in my 20’s. I’ve always run a totally loose band of whatever looked interesting at the feedstore or what was given to me by people getting out of chickens. In about 2005 a friend gave me two little buttercup/banty cross roosters and then things really went into overdrive, my feedstore hens were cranking out chicks right and left, all a glorious mix of breeds and colors. We gave away hens and spare roosters but at some point I had way too many. They were all free range and the roosters would pick their hens and they all ran in their own little groups, all free range. I rarely lost any but we had 7 dogs at the time including a GP. When we moved from there we gave away all but 3 and I took those to my little house in town where they went from being wild as sparrows to tame as dogs. The puppy played with one of them to death which he would be dismayed to know he had killed her (sweetest dog ever) but I still have two. These hens are probably 10 years old and I can see the Butterup, White Rock (I had one and she had so many chicks the white still comes through), buff orp and RIR in them. They still lay really well in the summer and are tame as dogs now, come in the house to clean up under the bird cages and pan handle for treats in the kitchen before I shoo them out. I haven’t bought a chick since probably 2010 but I’ll be getting more this year since we moved to a place where I can expand again. I have a chicken expert in my life now so I’ve been having fun figuring out what to get! My oldest hen I ever had was an Ameraucana that was 16 and she was still laying the summer she died.
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This is gorgeous!
A chicken coop (and hens) is my next farm project. I’m inspired by yours!
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After reading this thread, I want chickens!
Are they easier than goats?
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Heck yeah!
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Except that annoying part where literally everything (ok, almost everything) wants to eat your chickens.
I am sure lots of things want to eat your goats too, but the list of what wants to eat your chickens is much longer.
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Yes. My friend who kept chickens relatively successfully out in the hills for 30 or more years just says, “Don’t get too attached. They come and go.”
We tried an automatic door opener, but it kept jamming, so now I am the automatic door opener.
I have two coops: both of them children’s playhouses. One is a Little Tikes (had to put up a bunch of hardware cloth on the insides of the windows to keep critters out) and a larger one that was home made. It has it’s own solar panel (fake, but funny).
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I have a lot of bobcat and fox around, plus a couple raccoons. I’ve heard coyotes but never seen them. So goats are fairly safe. I worry more about neighbors dogs taking them out but they are safe in their fencing and have a stall at night.
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To elaborate a bit more, chickens are a somewhat large up-front investment, but once you have your coop and run they take very little fussing on a daily basis. I tend to clean my coop out every 2-3 weeks depending on how many I have in it, dump and clean waters and chuck food out. That’s really about it, to be honest. I use a heated 2 gallon bucket in the winter and most large fowl breeds can drink from it fine, if you got bantams you’d want to put a cinder block next to it.
With all of your predators you would want to do a sturdy coop and run with hardware cloth, and prices have gone up. So it would be a decent investment, but to me it seems easier than goats which need to be fenced and have specific hay and deworming etc. Granted, I do deworm my birds and you do need to dust them for mites and lice occasionally, but they don’t feel like as big of an investment as hoofstock.
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Agree. Also, it is perfectly possible to fill up the waterers and feeders and leave for the weekend, unlike most other livestock. (Frankly, it’s our dogs that keep us tied to home more than the chickens or horses.)
Our coops and runs were put together with scavenged materials. We started with chain link dog kennel panels for the runs and added chicken wire and hardware cloth, but their is some expense and labor in getting them set up.
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Yes, this! When my mom ended up in the hospital for a month my chickens survived fine with me feeding and watering once a week, and I had quite a few of them then too. Only thing I needed help with was having a friend buy me some feed and drop it off.
So I’m going to spend all weekend looking at chicken coops and the best chicken breeds that don’t try to kill themselves on a regular basis. 
The fact that I can set it up to feed/water weekly makes it an easy decision. Plus eggs are expensive and I make a lot of homemade ice cream in the warm months.
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I’m buying a “portable” 10X20 car port canopy frame this weekend. You know those big, temporary garages people put up covered in tarps? This one doesn’t have any tarps left, but I can put it out in the field for the chickens with bird wire over the top and they have a large area that will be safe from hawks. It’s even moveable (though it would take two people, being much bigger than a chicken tractor.) Since it is only for daytime use, I won’t need to heavily reinforce it – their smaller pen is the reinforced area.
My “free range” area for the chickens is about 5X the size of one of these, so if I wait long enough and scour Facebook long enough, I’ll wind up with enough of these things I won’t need to move them anymore. And with only bird netting over the top, it won’t be a sea of ugly car canopies: I expect the frame will visually disappear.
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“Best chicken breeds” depends on exactly what you want.
If you want sweet pets that also lay eggs, it’s hard to go wrong with Orpingtons. They are big, friendly and silly looking.
If you just want maximum egg production, it’s hard to go wrong with the commercial egg laying breeds: Red Sexlinks, Golden Comets, Cinnamon Queens, ISA Browns. (I suspect those are all different names for the same chicken. ;-))
ETA: If you want a colorful egg basket, get Easter Eggers, Azurs, Cream Legbars or Aracanas for blue and green eggs, Welsummers or Black Copper Marans for dark brown eggs.
If you want silliness and entertainment and small eggs, get Silkies.
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