We went and picked out 4 super cute chicks from the feed store and kept them in a Rubbermaid in my daughter's room. One died the very first night. Lots of tears from my daughter who's love for animals knows no bounds. We went right back to the store and bought another. After that things went along fine until about 2 weeks later when we lost another chick, our family favorite :( My daughter was now beside herself with grief and decided she was maybe not cut out for raising chickens. Too late now I reminded her :) Back to the store for ANOTHER chick.
So my plan was to raise 4 chickens for a year and then slaughter two and buy 2 more chicks. And repeat that every year so we always have young egg laying chickens, and we can eat two a year. However, I have a good friend who contacted me to see if I wanted a couple of egg laying hens right now. I thought that would put my plan 6 months ahead of where I was so we added 2 more to our brood.
Now I needed a coop though so I got on Craigslist and found the mother of all city backyard chicken coops. I couldn't resist lol You can see how beautiful it is before we added chickens. It doesn't stay that way long :)
We also quickly realized that it wasn't nearly big enough. It was great when the chickens were little but squishing 6 full size chickens into that teeny run was no good so we bought a dog run and attached it to the back to the chickens can go in and out at will. During the summer we add a tarp to the top. Since we live in the middle of the city, predators aren't a problem so they have a lot of freedom.
In 2013 we got some fertilized eggs from a friend and put them under one of our chickens that had gone broody. She hatched all of the eggs. It was SO awesome! And the great thing was she took care of them so we didn't have to keep them in the house. Here she is teaching them how to scratch for food. Sweetest. Thing. EVER!
Now it's 2014, we are still LOVING our chickens. We are planning on getting some baby chicks from the feed store again this year because I want to get some Ameraucana chickens who lay blue, green, or pink eggs. Thinking it might be fun to add some more color to our egg basket.