King coop

Lisa's article in 'Chickens' magazine on the Fort Knox of henhouses, plus a flock update.

My article on “Coop de Rupe,” an elaborate chicken coop designed by an architect and constructed by a professional team, appeared in the March/April print edition of Chickens magazine.

It’s now also available online, if you’d like to purchase a single, digital issue. While I’m personally loyal to print, either way, I highly recommend Chickens for a deep dive on how to raise and care for your own flock.

I don’t often have time to pitch to magazines, or at least not in my now 16-year career as a game writer and studio owner, though I was a journalist in a previous life. But as many of you who followed the drama of 2023 know, I found myself with time last summer: Nearly every one of our writing projects at Brunette Games was canceled, and I had to lay off all four of my full-time staff, including my own husband, Anthony C Valterra (who also writes here on occasion).

It was rough stuff. Unlike a lot of couples, I guess, we truly enjoy working together, and we miss that very much. So much so that we recently realized we were both still holding onto a lot of grief around the loss. The movie Encanto, specifically this song, helped us express it and let go.

It’s a lovely movie if you haven’t seen it, an example of what we now call “diversity” done well (for many of us in the fiction business, this used to be just good story design). There’s even a character that Anthony and I both thought a dead ringer for his Uncle Richie.

We hadn’t taken any time off last summer to regroup. With health care and finances on the line, we didn’t have the luxury. But one bright spot to come out of that cruel summer is the piece in Chickens. I hope you enjoy it!

We’re both doing fine, by the way. He found a new job, and Brunette Games has been thick with enough writing projects to keep me steadily busy since October. Of course, as the song says, we “live in a world that changes and keeps changing,” so...

This Substack is a sink rather than source of earnings, as it is for the vast majority of Substack writers, probably 80 percent of us. Your paid subscription helps enormously.

Flock Lives Matter

Last I left off in my growing preoccupation with chicken keeping was with the teen chickies’ liberation from the mobile coop, or chickshaw. As I mentioned in “Backyard homestead chickens,” the plan was to let them clear the weeds and till and fertilize the soil where I was planning to put in our annual vegetables and herbs this year.

Backyard homestead chickens

That plan worked beautifully. Where the flock ranged for a few weeks, I’ve since sown seeds for cucumber, zucchini, beans, okra, and watermelon, and I’ve planted tomato, eggplant, pepper, and basil starts. We’ve never used a rototiller as a lot of gardeners still do but instead employed a broad fork because it’s less destructive to the soil ecosystem. We don’t use commercial fertilizer, as that gives a short-term gain for long-term deficit. We instead relied on the gifts the chickens left behind, as well as the spent pine sawdust from our cat’s litter box and compost tea from the two spin composters. These areas had also overwintered with heavy wood-chip mulch, which helped the soil retain water and build mycorrhizal fungi, which boosts the types of veggies I’ve planted there.

We then moved the chickshaw to a strip where I plan to sow winter squash. Remember our solution was to get an electric fence powered by a portable solar energizer.

And that’s where things went wrong.

By “things,” I mean that solar energizer.

After just two weeks, it shorted out, perhaps during one of our copious electrical storms. It’s covered by warranty, but they’re not sending a replacement; we had to return it for repair. Meanwhile, our electric fence is no longer… zingy.

Chickens are no fools. It took them half a day to realize the fence was no longer electrified. They were still small enough at seven weeks to be able to slip through the wider weave on the top part of the fence, which they could reach with one of their flighty half-jumps.

I tried to keep them inside the fence at first but quickly felt like Lucy on the candy assembly line, as I’d get one back over the fence, only to have three more slip out.

I finally gave up, which might have been the best thing. I removed the fence because I didn’t want them slowed down if they dashed for the mobile coop to take quick shelter from a swooping hawk.

That was a week ago, and everything’s been… fine!

Our garden is lush with trees, bushes, and wildflowers, so they’ve had plenty of hidey places. There’s a six-foot fence ringing the whole backyard. They’re a good flock that sticks together, and every evening, they head back into the coop like clockwork so I can close it up tight. We haven’t lost a single one.

I still worry about them slipping next door or worse—out to the front and the street. Once I glanced outside and saw one of my neighbors’ chickens, ambling down the railroad tracks like a cartoon hobo.

Plus, they’re eating wherever they want, which means they’re not employed as my little poopaerators (combo fertilizer + soil aeration) on targeted plots. It’s going to be painful for all, but they’ll have to be contained again once the solar energizer’s back in action.

However, this little experiment (at least so far) has lived up to my original dream of free-range chickens who are perfectly at home in my home garden. It gives me joy to see their little striped butts poking up among the bee balm. They haven’t hurt the garden at all… the only even remotely annoying thing has been their penchant for scratching wood chips away from freshly planted herbs on the hugelkultur mound and scratching to expose the log buried there, which must be full of tasty treats. The wild baby rabbits, on the other hand… I’ve already had my Mr. McGregor moment over the decimated eggplant and tomato starts. I didn’t think they ate nightshades!

After a week of freeranging and being hand fed strawberry tops, the chickens have puffed out into rather large hens, though they are still many weeks away from becoming layers. We have a great deal of fun in the yard together. I call this moment The Chickening.

Here are some more photos for your chickentainment. As always, I wish you happy homesteading, no matter where you are.