Dental Office Chickens

Some of our banty chickens adopted  2012

I am a dental assistant who is also a chicken lover!!! We have chickens in the back of our dental office and I am the one who takes care of them.  This year I've decided to try and winter them here instead of sending them off to the farm of one of our patients.  This should prove interesting since Iowa weather is so unpredictable.

The Back Story: (the short version)
Philip Andersen DDS had chickens when he was very young, his father  had gotten chicks to raise and butcher.....well....Dr. Andersen ended up naming all of them and as the story goes......they became pets instead of dinner!!!  When we built our new dental office in 2001 the backside of our building butted up against farmland......well there was a covenant that prevented anyone from have "poultry" on their property.  A few years had gone by and Dr. Andersen had received a birthday gift from his wife.....a portable chicken coop!  So in 2004 he talked to the farmer who owned the land behind the dental office and obtained permission to build a pen for the chickens and that year we got our first batch of chickens and the rest is history!  We now have had the chickens for 8 years and we also have one hen, a Silver Spangled Hamburg, named Spottie (she had a twin sister named Dottie but she passed away several years ago). Our patients just love watching them mill around (and sometimes they are treated to show when our boys decided to fight). Every winter we have sent them to a farm, and all we hear during winter is:  "When are the chickens coming back?". 

We have had so many positive comments from patients about the chickens we are thinking chickens beat the heck out of watching fish swim around!  An added bonus is when the girls are laying we give patients free eggs!  Where else can you go and get dental work done and walk out with a dozen free eggs???

We have 4 banty roosters and 2 banty hens.

Last year 2011 we were talking to a patient about wanting to build a new coop one with insulation and storage.  Well, our patient returned with a drawing of a coop.  Dr. Andersen tweaked it a bit and it was on....he had the coop built and it was delivered last May, but it was such a wet spring we didn't get the chickens until late May or early June, but they loved the coop!  They even knew to use the nesting boxes to lay their eggs....of course we a had an accident or two, either the nesting boxes were full or we just had a very independant chicken who was going to be different and lay her eggs in the weirdest spots.

This year we had electricity ran out to the coop, pretty snazzy!!  I have to say our chickens live in the lap of luxury!  We are even thinking about putting in a web cam or should I say a Chicken Cam!!!  I'm sure lots of people would be watching!!!