Chickens at the Pharsyde

Presently we have 7 Austrolorp chooks and one rooster, which we find is more than plenty to keep us in eggs (and some to give away) for most of the year. Only when moulting during the early weeks of winter are numbers down.
You should check with your local council to see if there are any regulations on keeping chooks in your area.

A home built chook shed is easy to knock up, and reasonably cheap if using second hand materials.

The fancy looking doors on ours cost $10 from Uptons Salvage (old air conditioning covers!) the rest is scrap timber.
and second hand roofing iron.

I built the floor about 50 cm above the ground for several reasons: to stop vermin living under the floor, so the birds can dust themselves and shelter from the weather (sun and rain), and ease of cleaning.

The floor is made from used fence pailings, with a 1.5cm gap between for air circulation, also the old straw can fall through, along with any spillage.

From memory, it's about 1.2 metres deep (so you can reach the back when cleaning), 3 metres long and 2 metres tall.
It was supposed to be movable, however I made it too heavy, but this is an advantage in strong wind.

We have two chook runs - one from each door (ideally four runs would be better, another two from the other side). We rotate the chooks, while they manure and dig up one side, vegies grow in the other!

We feed them kitchen scraps (no meat, onions, banana), with fresh grass if there aren't many greens, layer pellets and wheat.

They cost less than $2 per week to feed and we average well over one dozen eggs per week.