Yesterday my family, aunt, and cousin enjoyed visiting several homes on Austin’s second annual Funky Chicken Coop Tour. I’d been looking forward to it since I found out about the tour a week after it took place last year. It was certainly fun but not as funky as I’d envisioned — after visiting the Cathedral of Junk last weekend I was really jived for some more Keep Austin Weirdness!
But chickens are weird all in themselves, so I was content. And they’re cute. Some are downright beautiful, actually — gorgeous patterns and whatnot.
Some of the first chicken coops we visited were quite well designed.
My husband was a big fan of the sliding doors on this next chicken coop.
The inside of another chicken coop looked fun for the chickens, but by mid-afternoon it was quite hot in there, and most of the chickens were outside.
This castle coop definitely qualified as funky. I can’t say it was designed for practicality — quite difficult to clean, but we spent more time at this house than any other. That says something!
The chickens loved the boys, who fetched them grass from around the yard.
Flowers decorated the castle…
And a peek inside revealed a framed picture to spark the chickens’ imagination.
Other nifty things about this castle coop were a large mailbox converted to a nesting box, and a doghouse as another one, and this bicycle-turned-waterwheel-and-fountain. There were even fish in the pond below.
Some of the chicken coops were large, like the one at Eastside Cafe. Of course, the gorgeous vegetable gardens distracted me. (This garden is worthy of a full blog tour sometime, too — another visit, though.)
But their sister farm, also in East Austin, had 200 chickens, the largest number on the tour.
This stop sign added an element of the funky and functional. Would that make it funk-tional?
And I liked this artwork from a recycled tire.
We finished the tour armed with ideas for our coop we plan to build this spring or summer. My primary requirement on our design — it must be easy to clean (that automatically means it will be tall). But we want it to be fun and funky and funk-tional, too.
Happy Easter, everyone! Hope it was eggs-cellent!
I have more bad jokes to share with you, but I’m too chicken.