The traditional chicken coop

Although we considered trying to domesticate the hen and rooster we saved during that snowy winter, my first foray into chicken keeping came almost a decade later.  I was living on the farm owned by Mark's aunt and uncle.  The old log barn halfway down the driveway had a chicken coop attached, and when I showed an interest in livestock, I was quickly given a dozen or so hens and a rooster to put in the coop --- a mixture of Buff Orpingtons and Australorps.

The coop was large and airy, and had a large run attached, but before we knew it the ground was scratched down to bare earth.  This is the way the majority of Americans raise their chickens, and at the time I didn't know any better.  The eggs were still better than storebought, but the hens didn't lay much in the winter and the yolks were nowhere near as yellow as those we get from our hens today.

Here I am emptying out their poopy chicken waterer.  Mark hadn't arrived on the scene yet, so I spent a lot of time pounding frozen waterers against the ground to knock the ice out and lugging buckets of water down the hill.  Now, of course, we'd install one of our automatic chicken waterers and at least clean up that portion of the coop.

Mark's aunt grew up with chickens, raised in the traditional farm style.  She told me that her family always cut a fresh red cedar to put in the coop each year.  They believed that the cedar kept lice and other bugs away.