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Thanks for the nice comments folks! To answer your questions, I’m in Southwest Washington just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. We usually have pretty mild winters here and it rarely gets below freezing for any significant length of time.

The coop design is my own. I looked online quite a bit for ideas and guidelines and ended up designing as I went. I have a large sketchbook and another that is large sheets of graph paper, 1/4” graduations. It makes drawing something like this a lot simpler; all I need is a couple of sharp pencils and a good straightedge. I built it in my head for a couple of months before I ever got started and drew it all out as I went. I even made my own plexiglass windows.

I provided 4 square feet of coop space per bird, and 10 square feet of covered run space per bird. Each bird in the coop needs 2 square feet of ventilation, and three windows exceed that. I also have passive ventilation so no matter what, there is air turnover inside. Those are the essential design guidelines....just figure out how big of a flock you want then build accordingly.

The run has a cubic yard of coarse gravel in it covered by 1 1/2 yards of coarse building sand. The run stays dry and in the winter months I throw some straw in there too and the girls like to nestle in it during the day.

Our City has an “Urban Livestock” Ordinance that was adopted some time ago that permits five laying hens per resident. I feel fortunate because a couple of other cities in the area are trying to write their own Ordinances, but it is more of an exercise in how much they can make issuing permits per chicken, how often to inspect people’s coops and generally intrude where they are not welcome, wanted or needed.

I was out turning my compost bin today and adding the week’s coffee grounds, and of course the girls pay close attention. I have to keep the bin fenced so the girls don’t gorge themselves on all the redworms in there. I just put 2000 red wigglers in there a month ago, and I want them eating compost, not feeding chickens.

I turned up an enormous fat nightcrawler today. That sucker had to be 10” long, easy. I turned around with it in my hand and I was mobbed by greedy chooks. One jumped up and snatched that worm out of my hand, and a chicken scrum ensued. The one that grabbed the worm first took off running, and another cut her off and snatched the worm away, then another snatched it from her. Everyone had the worm at one time or another and it kept getting shorter every time. It lasted all of 10 seconds, and everyone got a bite of it by the time it was done....