Newark Coops
Click on the coop link to get a more complete coop scoop (more photos, descriptions, offering)
Palo Alto Coops
- Bunratty Coop – An historic coop built in the 1940’s when Silicon Valley was agricultural and still known as Santa Clara Valley. We have a small happy flock of chickens.
Chicken Pi or Nugget and Beauty’s House of Feathers
- Sven coop
- A magnetic door connects the chicken coop to the chicken run, home to five birds.
Note the devious use of yogurt tubs to keep the chickens in an appropriate place on the roost.
Coop Little Ren Hen House
- Large vegetable garden with chicken coop, greenhouse, and fruit trees.
- Uniqueness: Our current six hens are the latest generation of chickens that have inhabited the back corner of our edible garden for the last 50 years or so. The ladies live happily in a little red hen house and 8’x16′ coop hammered together out of salvaged lumber about 25 years ago.
- Offering: Free lemonade.
Beitzimchat Coop
Custom Coop and bee hives –
Stanford University Coops
Stanford Educational Farm Coop-
Coop: The Stanford Educational Farm is a 6 acre organic farm that provides hands on learning opportunities for both the stanford community and beyond. We have one mobile coop that houses 11 chickens. Folks will be able to take a guided tour around the farm to see whats growing and how the farm is run.
More Coop info: Our coop was hand built by volunteers and is a great example of integrating livestock into sustainable farming practices.
San Jose Coops
- L’esprit de Coop – This Willow Glen urban farm has coops and gardens and composters!
- Sam’s Downtown Feed – This feed store in downtown San Jose is the place to get chicken and coop supplies and bee keeping equipment. There are coops for and bee keeping starter packers to launch your backyard urban farm today!
- On hand will be backyard chicken experts and bee experts.
- Free chilled water for tour coop visitors!
- Say hi to Sam while you are there!
The Shibley Avenue Sewing Club Long ago, just after WWII, this house was built for and purchased by my grandparents Vern and Bea. There was a group of ladies that met for sewing club along this street for years in the 1950’s. The ladies would share hosting duties providing coffee, chatter, gossip, maybe a casserole and a little sewing every Wednesday. Naturally, when I got into chicken keeping almost 3 years ago I instantly knew there must be a symbolic nod to this block and the greatest generation. My chickens, past and present, are named after my grandmother (nicknamed Bunny) and her girlfriends.
Coop: We have 2 buff Orpington and 1 black Sexlink hens in a backyard coop.
More coop Info: My husband designed and built our coop, with help from me and our adult daughter and nephew. The door to the coop is painted yellow like our home’s front door, and “the girls” are all named after First Ladies: Dolley (Madison), Elizabeth (Monroe), and Mary (Todd Lincoln). We also have two beautiful murals of Pasadena, where my husband and I great up together, painted on our home, by a Willow Glen resident and artist.
Los Altos Coops
Description: Come see our large enclosed coop, 18 chickens, 2 active beehives, vegetable and flower gardens, 16+ fruit trees, blackberries and raspberries, drought tolerant landscaping with California native plants and shrubs, all in the heart of Silicon Valley on our little urban farm with its California Historic Landmark Dutch Colonial farm house (c. 1898.)
Coop Details: 50L x 20W x 8H completely enclosed coop to protect from foxes and hawks with 2 henhouses. Special features include automatic doors, temperature controlled heat lamps, no-waste feeder, a smaller house to raise chicks, and a separate run to reset brooders or isolate chicks from older chickens. Breeds include: Speckled Sussex, Blue Copper Maran, Delaware, Americana, Buff Orpington, Easter Egger, Brahma, Golden Cuckoo Maran, Lakevenelder, Partridge Cochin, Partridge Rock, Back Langshan, and Barnevelder.
Coop info: Large enclosure with 3 hen houses. 11 hens and 1 rabbit. Lots of little kids as well. 🙂
More coop info:
Lovely setting with the forest. Chickens free range often throughout the day and are friendly.
Los Gatos Coops
This is a mid-century modern chicken coop built by green builder (Bruce King www.bruce-king.com) of San Rafael. Coop was originally built using only reclaimed materials, but in order to get it to fit on our very sloped property, we had to add some new lumber to get it to work. 90-95% reclaimed.
Coop: Ride your bike to the bottom of the scenic Harwood hill in Los Gatos to the hillside residence of the fluffy girls on Alerche Drive. After parking your bike on the driveway or down the stairs on the urbanite (recycled sidewalk) area, make your way to the backyard chicken wonderland. Nestled amongst redwood trees, our chickens share their expansive +/- 300 sq ft of enclosed area with an acre of mostly native plants and a unique circular vegetable garden.
More Coop Info: Our Chicken Town is not just an utilitarian hen house, it is a unique chicken paradise. With over 300 square feet space plus multiple levels of resting bars for the girls to roam or rest, their wonderland is completely enclosed and protected from predators, yet still accessible to caretakers. Our girls might start their day in the Egg Plant, wander down the cheezeway (an elevated chicken breezeway) to the Fluffy Butt Hut and feed under the redwoods. After some sweet morning clucks, these girls will make their way down the chunnel (chicken tunnel) past the shaded Chick Pit, to relax in the 15-ft tall Cluckin’ Cabana. Here they sun and feed/water themselves again before resting on the 10-ft high perches overlooking the neighbors’ vineyards. These fluffy girls live in a dwelling like no other.
cHick n bees – Chicken and Bee Keeping Supply Store on the tour
Store owners Jon and Melody have been in business for over 12 years (selling ink and toner) but only recently added their passions “Chickens and Bees” (they have 24 chickens and 18 hives) to their merchant business.
cHICK n bEES sells backyard bee and chicken keeping supplies and much more. We provide many services as well.
Offering:
cHICK n bEES sells everything for the backyard bee and chicken keeper along with many services.
This year during Tour De Coop cHICK n bEES will be offering the following:
- Feed fermenting Station, showing how to.
- Feed Sprouting Station, showing how to.
- Meal worm and Super worm Station, showing how to grow your own.
- Heritage and Fancy Breed Chicks and Pullets will be for Sale through our local breeder from Woodside.
- An observation Hive for viewing
- Handouts about feed and chicken rearing along with Free Samples of Scratch and Peck Feeds
- Water, Snack and a Restroom will be provided
Our hens were chosen for both personality and egg-color, so perhaps they’ll inspire you to think of these things while choosing your own flock. We’ll have info on all the breeds we have. Our coop was built to keep our girls safe from predator attack (you won’t see any chicken wire here), ease of maintenance, and with plenty of space. We are always happy to share what we’ve learned.
There’s a bench built into our front fence, which you are invited to enjoy if you need a place to sit along the way. We’ll have drinks out for anyone needing a fill-up. Coming soon: a Little Free Library to peruse as well.
If you stop in our back yard, we’ll have drinks, kids are welcome to blow off some steam on our jungle gym. We’ll try to find you a shady spot to sit if you’d like.
Photos coming soon!
Mountain View Coops
Silicon Valley Micro Homesteading –
Situated in The Valley of Hearts’ Delight, our little suburban homestead features chickens, a beehive, bunnies, fruit trees, California natives, veggies and flower gardens. We’re happy to welcome you back after the pandemic!
Sunnyvale Coops
Crows Watch Urban Farm
Address: 776 Henderson Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Coop info:
Tim and Victoria live across the street from Ponderosa Park – the home with front vegetable garden, fruit trees and a BIG redwood tree.
This is a great place to start the Los Altos/Sunnyvale loop. Lots of street parking around the park. Shoe wash station in Driveway. Enter through gate on right to come around to chicken coop in the back yard.
Offering: We will provide ice tea and snacks, or feel free to BYO lunch
Coops: We have an 6’x18′ American Coop by Carolina Coops with ~15 chickens that also have the run around our mini tree orchard.
More than coops: Besides the coop, we are an award-winning All Electric Home w/EVs and are the headquarters for California Chins – Chinchilla Rescue.
Newark Coops
Description:
We have chickens, mini-orchard, raised garden, and native bee housing.
Our native habitat front yard is designed to attract indigenous pollinators, including hummingbirds as well as insects. We water our front yard once or twice a year, the vine maples slightly more often.
We have a steel aviary with a plastic house inside where the LF layers live. On the right is the breeding housing for the Dominique bantams. The aviary has “circus tents” – fitted canvas covers for shade and to keep rain out. The bantam housing is built of Coroplast on a steel frame and was shipped in from the Great Plains due to being coyote proof – a problem animal at our cabin in Nevada
The Dominiques patrol the orchard and the berry rows and keep insects down and eat low hanging and fallen fruit. Since we acquired them, our yard seems to be slug and snail free, although mollusks didn’t seem to be eaten by the other breeds of chickens we have had here. In fact, our top hen, a four year old Black Star is not interested and looks disgusted when she runs over for her share of what the other girls are eating and discovers it is a slug or a snail. She lifts all of her feathers and sort of stalks away looking very offended 🙂
Silicon Valley - Tour De Coop 