The Perfect Chicken Coop?

Do a Google image search for “chicken coop” and a solid majority of the results will look very much like this nearly 100 year old coop featured in The Gardener’s and Poultry Keeper’s Guide and Illustrated Catalog. Why is this basic design still with us? The attached run gives chickens some space to scratch around in while keeping them safe from predators if you can’t make it home by dark. You can hang a feeder in...

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Poultry Houses of the Ultra-Wealthy

tics when I built our coop. I am much more happy with the chicken run our architect friend John Zapf designed for us. The east elevation of Odey’s coop. Of course Odey’s coop is a bit over the top, to put it mildly. The symbolic meaning of a hedge fund manager, who profited off the financial collapse, building an elaborate stone chicken house has ruffled a few feathers in Britain. But I have to admit that I share the same neo...

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Saturday Linkages: Chicken Hot Dogs and Toilet Museums

...ed Getaway | Designs & Ideas on Dornob http://dornob.com/high-hanging-tea-house-offers-suspended-getaway/ … ??? South Korea’s toilet culture museum: http://boingboing.net/2012/12/03/south-koreas-toilet-museum.html … Chicken hotdogs and garters for boys who want to be manly: http://boingboing.net/2012/12/03/chicken-hotdogs-and-garters-fo.html … For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter: Follow @rootsimple...

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Urban Chicken Classes

Homegrown Neighbor here: If you are in L.A. come check out my Intro to Urban Chickens class this Saturday at The Learning Garden in Venice. More info at our Chicken Enthusiasts site. The class is just $10 and if you have never been to The Learning Garden it is a real treat. It is one of my favorite gardens in our fair metropolis. The class is at 10:30 am and will be followed by a general meeting of local chicken enthusiasts. If you aren’...

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Denver and Los Angeles Experience Crowds Staring at Chicken Coops

Denver Urban Homesteaders looking at a chicken coop Judging from the phone calls and emails coming into the Homegrown Evolution compound, America has discovered that it just might be a good idea to grow some vegetables and keep some chickens. There’s lots of motivating factors, no doubt. A bad economy and dissatisfaction with factory farming to start. But we also suspect that folks have discovered that it’s just plain fun to do all...

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The Chicken and the Egg

ust pull up a chair in the late afternoon and watch the four chickens that populate our backyard in their ongoing search for seeds, bugs and the need to sort out the pecking order. After many hours of poultry behavior viewing it’s no surprise to us that some anthropologists believe that the chicken was first domesticated to provide entertainment (through cock fighting) rather than eggs or meat. But more important than the entertainment valu...

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Chicken Nipple Waterering Systems

s Network blogger Stephanie Dayle has instuctions for making a bucket and pipe system here. You can purchase the nipples on Amazon. And the bucket and pipe system pictured above is being sold on Amazon here (I have not tested it). Ideally all the parts should be food grade as I’m not a fan of PVC. Of course the zinc in the galvanized waterer is probably not so great either, so it’s probably another case of not letting perfection be th...

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