Last weekend Nathan, my father-in-law and I toured a few of the coops on the first Austin Funky Chicken Coop Tour.  Here are a few photos from the last coop we toured, on Justin Lane in the Crestview neighborhood, just a little south of our house.

After seeing the coops on the tour, we decided that we want a walk-in coop for ease of cleaning and maintenance; we learned that the deep litter method really works; we learned that you can select among breeds of chickens for different temperaments, heat tolerances and egg types; we learned about different feeding and watering set-ups; and we saw several different ways to integrate a chicken coop into a backyard garden.

We’re excited about starting our own backyard flock, but we’ll probably wait until next Spring to get chickens, when the babies are a little older.  Hopefully then we’ll be a little less slammed around the house than we are right now, and the babes will be better able to appreciate watching chicks grow up.  Which means we’ve got about a year to build our coop–whee!