Selling the Chickens and Taking Down the Coop: The Day the Move to Idaho Got Real

T-minus 11 days.

That's where we were in the countdown to the move to Idaho when a neighbor showed up at 7:30 in the morning with her teenage daughter and three dog crates.

We'd sold her our 12 chickens for $50. And in 20 minutes flat, every last hen was caught, crated, and loaded into her truck.

I stood there in the suddenly quiet yard and watched them drive away. And then I started taking down the coop.

The Coop We Built

This wasn't a simple structure. Over about 12 months, that chicken coop had grown into three separate expansions.

It started as a standard wooden coop from the farm store — the kind you assemble on a Saturday afternoon and feel very accomplished about. Then I added an eight-foot dog kennel around it to give the hens more room to roam. Then T-posts and fencing wire for more space. Then one final expansion to connect two garden hoop houses, where I'd let the flock clear out weeds for me all summer.

A year of work. Twenty minutes to load the chickens. A morning to take it all down.

Here's the thing though: I wasn't sad about it. I was saving it. My plan was to take as much of the fencing, hardware, and materials as possible to Idaho and rebuild from what I'd learned. The mistakes of the first coop had taught me what the second one needed to be.

Lucky Finally Got His Moment

Our dog Lucky had spent an entire year watching those chickens from the other side of the fence. He'd never been allowed inside the coop perimeter. It was a standing rule — the chickens were off limits to the dog.

The morning the chickens left, Lucky walked straight into the coop.

I took a photo. He looked absolutely satisfied with himself. The expression on his face is one of my favorite things from that whole moving season.

What I Learned From Year One of Chickens

By the time we sold those hens, I'd learned things about chicken keeping that I couldn't have learned any other way. Predator management — the ground-level fortification that stops weasels and raccoons from getting underneath. Ventilation without draft. Nesting box ratios. The difference between molting and illness. How to spot an egg-bound hen.

I also learned that 12 chickens is the right number for a family of eight. Not 30. Not 32 like we'd end up with in Idaho for a while. Twelve is plenty.

We arrived in Idaho ready to build something better because of everything that first coop taught us.

The Coop We Built in Idaho

On our three acres in Filer, we rebuilt. Better fortification at the ground level. Better ventilation. Better layout. And eventually 30-plus chickens because, apparently, we hadn't fully learned the lesson about appropriate flock size.

But that's a story for another post.

The point is: the coop you build first is the coop that teaches you how to build the next one. In homesteading, in real estate, in most things worth doing — the first version is tuition.

📞 Dr. Ron Jones | 208-712-8386 — I've built the coops and I've sold the acreage. Let me help you find the right Magic Valley property for your homestead plans.

Photo taken by Dr. Ron Jones the morning the chickens were sold, T-minus 11 days before the move to Idaho. Lucky the dog is pictured finally entering the empty coop.

Dr. Ron Jones | Rim & River Real Estate | rimandriver.com | 208-712-8386