Tess Freeman / The Bulletin Jack Bridges built his chicken and turkey coops to look like town houses.

The chickens and roosters in Central Oregon certainly have something to crow about when it comes to their housing situation.

At a recent chicken coop tour in Bend, we went to investigate how the fowl in our area live, and what we found is that our feathered friends are living pretty good lives in their special, and often upscale, dwellings.

Central Oregon’s chickens live everything from a free-range lifestyle, roaming around an open farm with majestic views of the Cascades, to lives in chicken condos, with luxurious nesting beds where they can lay eggs in peace.

Free-rangers

At the HolmesStead Ranch, just outside Bend city limits, several dozen chickens, roosters, ducks and turkeys rule the roost and basically get the run of the 27-acre farm as free-range animals. The hens and roosters can take in the mountain views, and if they don’t appreciate that, the owners of HolmesStead Ranch certainly do.

“Someday, I want to be able to do this full time,” says Mike Holmes wistfully. He hasn’t quit his day job yet but sells his chickens’ daily two dozen-egg output through Central Oregon Locavore, along with his meat poultry.

Daughter Jennifer Holmes lends a hand with the poultry, pointing out the laying hens, the meat chickens, ducks and the turkeys roaming around.

“We don’t like to confine our chickens, because if they start to get too confined, they will peck at each other,” says Jennifer, who says the poultry on their ranch have it pretty good. “The only thing we really have to watch out for here are the ravens, who like to steal and eat the eggs, so we have our nesting boxes covered, and we try to pick up the eggs twice a day.”

Jennifer Holmes points to a hen that’s taken up with a turkey and says the hen feels more comfortable with the big turkey, explaining that “birds of the same feather don’t necessarily flock together.”

The only real complaint she has is the roosters crowing at the crack of dawn each and every morning.

“They don’t let you forget the sun is rising,” she said.

Turkey townhomes

Just down the road from the HolmesStead Ranch is Story Hill Farm, run by Army veteran and inventor Jack Bridges and Michelle Bridges.

The year-old farm integrates custom-built chicken and turkey townhomes, painted in a farm fashionable sun-dried-tomato red. Surrounding the poultry townhomes are the well-kept organic gardens and greenhouse.

“We allow our feathered friends to sleep in the lap of luxury, while the expansive runs allow our ‘free-range’ chickens and turkeys to live happily, scratching and pecking their way through beautiful Central Oregon days,” says Michelle Bridges with a hearty laugh.

Wearing sturdy cowboy boots, Michelle Bridges sits in front of the chicken and turkey townhouses under a shade tree with a 3-month-old chick she had just named “Lucky.” She says the chick was born with spraddled legs, which they had taped together, and he seemed to be doing OK, but when they tried to reintroduce Lucky to the rest of the brood, trouble began.

“They started picking on Lucky. It’s really true, that pecking-order thing among chickens. They were bullying him, so I took him out, and he’s staying with me now and will probably become my pet,” says Michelle Bridges. “So his new name is ‘Lucky,’ because he was part of the meat chicken coop, and he won’t be going back there.”

Jack Bridges, who loves the farm life and says he learned a lot about poultry farming through books and the Internet, just invented a watering device for his chicken and turkey townhouses.

“The watering dishes they have for chickens (are) not very efficient. I mean, they get dirty, and every day you have to wash them down and sanitize them,” says Jack Bridges. “So I started making a watering device with PVC (plastic pipes) with nipples on them that always keeps the water fresh and clean. You don’t want them to have poopy water.”

Stepping inside the hens’ coop, we see the nesting boxes on one side of the townhouse and perches on the other half. The perches are where the hens sleep at night.

Under the wooden perches is a door to the outside, where chickens have their run.

Inside townhouse No. 2 is where the turkeys live. Outside their townhome is a chalkboard sign that reads: “Pork — the other white meat.”

Before Michelle Bridges even opens the door to this turkey townhouse, a couple of them have perched near the window and are looking out at us with apparent curiosity.

“I thought the chickens would be friendly, but I found it’s the turkeys that are really the friendliest,” says Michelle Bridges, pointing to a turkey door, which also leads to a turkey run outside.

Moving to the next townhouse, Michelle Bridges, in a hushed voice, says these are the meat chickens.

“We should really call it something else. Maybe the roaster coop?” says Michelle. “We have 25 of them, and I told my husband when it comes time to slaughter them, I don’t want to be anywhere nearby.”

Michelle picks up Lucky and seems happy to have saved her new pet from his original fate.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

If you ask Tawny Pickert this simple question, she’ll tell you it was to move uptown, or at least up the pecking order to bigger, more beautiful digs.

Pickert says her chickens had a cute but modest and very small starter coop until earlier this year, when she asked her husband for a much larger chicken coop for her birthday.

Her gift has allowed her to expand her brood, and the chickens just had to cross the garden road to get to their new house.

A new group of baby chicks is confined to a makeshift nursery on the lawn, where Pickert points out her new exotic breeds, the blue silkies and white frizzles. They look like chicks wearing a heavy-feathered, fluffy coat.

Pickert, wearing her pink, “Have you hugged your chickens today?” T-shirt, walks us into her new large chicken coop, pointing out the luxuries her chickens enjoy.

“The coop is fully enclosed and insulated with six nesting boxes,” says Pickert, pointing to the nesting boxes, which have some eggs waiting to be collected. “The runs to the outside have a variety of playground accessories, (on) which the chickens can perch, and I placed mirrors inside and out so they can admire themselves.”

Pickert says it’s important that chickens have stimulation. She’s named them all and hangs pictures of her chickens with their names written underneath on the chicken coop walls.

“Chickens are really creatures of habit, so they all come in at night time, and they know where their nesting boxes are to lay their eggs, so it’s really pretty easy to have chickens,” says Pickert.

Outside, we stroll along the fenced chicken run and see a few of the chickens checking themselves out in a framed antique mirror.

“I do love my chickens, but they aren’t the brightest. They think they’re looking at other chickens. I guess that’s where the term ‘bird brain’ comes from,” says Pickert, laughing.

Haute couture chickens

Shalet Abraham’s chickens prove she didn’t need acreage to have hens. In her Awbrey Butte backyard, she’s managed to build an enclosed chicken coop along with new beehives among the flourishing raised beds of vegetables.

“We also have a new fence courtesy of an unfortunate incident with a neighborhood dog, who got to our chickens last year,” says Abraham, as she points to the newly erected 8-foot fence encircling her backyard. “Our chickens are still young, so hopefully we’ll be getting more eggs as they get a little older.”

Abraham, a veterinarian, became interested in chickens when someone brought in a hen that had been attacked by a dog.

“The poor hen didn’t have any feathers left on her body, so I knitted her a sweater, so she wouldn’t get cold,” says Abraham, who saved that hen and found she loved chickens.

Abraham now has a handful of chickens that, not surprisingly, all don fashionable sweaters in varying colors during the winter months, courtesy of Abraham’s knitting skills.

Those chickens aren’t about to fly the coop, as they know a good thing when they see it. After all, they are probably the best-dressed chickens in the state.

Chicken school

A chicken education shouldn’t be undervalued, says teacher Teresa Ashford, owner of Aspen Academy Preschool, who not only educates her young students on chickens but also believes her chickens have learned from her toddlers.

Aspen Academy is home to four chickens, a Barred Plymouth Rock, a Rhode Island Red, an Australorp and a Buff Orpington. The preschoolers can tell you the different breeds and their names.

“Our school chickens are older than many of our children enrolled in the program,” says Ashford. “Our preschoolers are able to feed the chickens scraps from leftover organic school meals, and they engage in daily egg collection.”

As the chickens have grown older, their production isn’t as prolific as it once was. Ashford hopes to give her hens a good retirement, even when they no longer produce. She says their school is about organic products and vegetarianism, so they won’t be chicken nuggets any time soon.

“We want our children to respect the environment and embrace-the-earth concepts of sustainability, recycling and composting, and our chickens are a big part of that curriculum,” says Ashford.

Urban farm

Erik Hotvedt says he has happy hens in his east Bend backyard. With a handful of hens, they receive about five eggs per day.

Hotvedt is trying to make his backyard an urban farm, which he’d someday like to be totally self-sufficient and sustainable.

“It’s called urban farming, where you take any available space you have and use it for chicken coops or gardening,” Hotvedt explains. “The chicken coop used to be over here, but we decided to move them to this other side of the yard, because we get lots of sun here, so it’s great for our vegetables.”

Hotvedt says this is a garden coop, because the hens have access to the compost pile for plant scraps. What they don’t eat goes into his lush gardens, which are already brimming with vegetables.

Hotvedt says all his produce and eggs are organic. He feeds the chickens old produce that can’t be sold at Nature’s organic grocery store. Although he doesn’t sell his eggs or produce, he says with what they grow, he’s able to keep his family of four well-fed, pretty much year round.

As for the hens, they look pretty happy in their large coop, where 12-year-old Shephard Hotvedt has the chore of cleaning the coop and letting the birds out each morning. His younger sister, Charity, is in charge of feeding the chickens.

“I didn’t really like the chickens at first, because they can be real mean, especially ‘Goldie,’ who got my finger,” says Charity, pointing to the Band-Aid wrapped around her pointer finger. “She’s real broody.”

Shephard Hotvedt points out that he’s proud that his father was able to make the chicken coop out of all reclaimed materials he found around town.

Coop condos

Mont and Julie West have pulled out all the stops when it comes to their chickens and roosters.

Mont West started on his chicken farm a few years ago, when he retired. Though he probably has at least a hundred chickens and roosters on the farm, he finds raising them relaxing and good for lowering his blood pressure.

“It’s an addictive hobby,” says Mont, tipping up his cowboy hat and wiping the sweat from his brow. “I sort of outgrew the local chickens and went out to the Midwest to find some new breeds we don’t have here.”

By bringing new breeds into the state, West says he thinks he’s the only chicken farmer in Central Oregon who has an olive green-colored egg.

“There’s always been the blue egg and sort of the light-colored green egg, but no one I know has been able to produce this beautiful olive green egg,” says West, pointing to the different color eggs in his egg carton.

“No matter the color of the egg, they all basically taste the same.” In the winter, the laying hens lay fewer eggs, so he estimates he gets about two dozen a day, but in the summer, when there’s more daylight hours, he says he can get about 30 dozen a day.

It keeps him busy, and he doesn’t plan to become a larger producer, because he wants to keep it as a hobby and doesn’t want it to feel like a job again.

West points out the “penthouse” for his bantam coop and says all the little birds have big personalities; he’s continually fascinated by the ever-changing variety of ages and breeds.

At the West chicken farm, West built all the chicken coops from the bachelors’ Rooster Row condos to the cozy baby nursery and the heated incubators. He shows us the new baby chicks fresh out of the shells in the incubators.

He points out the “teenager” pullets, hanging out in their ’hood.

But the big man on campus is the French Faverolles, with its shiny, beautiful fluffed-out feathers. The rooster clucks around the condos and penthouses and nurseries, keeping order. West can hand-feed this beauty of a fowl, and he will follow West all over the farm. He explains it takes one rooster to keep the ladies in line and to protect them from predators.

The hardest workers, though, are his laying hens, so he built them a suburb of their own known as the “Three Chic Condos.” Here, the hens can cluck and scratch to their hearts’ content, all while being given extra artificial light in the winter to help with their egg production. All the coops are centrally heated for cold nights on the High Desert.

“Chickens are a no-brainer,” says West, who’s happy if he makes $500 a year or just breaks even. He sells the eggs on his farm to friends and gives away his roosters for free. “I even have a Native American artist who picks up the roosters for their feathers to make jewelry.”

In Central Oregon, the coops come in all shapes and sizes, from scrap-wood shanties to designer coops outfitted with art on the walls and play spaces. Most of the chicken dwellings have 2 to 3 feet of space per bird, with nesting boxes, roosting bars for sleeping and chicken runs so they can stretch their legs.

But most chicken coop owners say you don’t need a lot of space to have a few chickens for farm-fresh eggs.

— Reporter: halpen1@aol.com