I never would have imagined that anyone in my family would have chickens. However, we did live in a converted chicken coup when I was quite young. It was made into a single story home where we lived. 
I wonder now if it had some impact on my sister as she has decided to become an urban farmer. I didn't realize when she moved that she would actually get chickens.
One day, we went to visit and there they were. I had my first view of them a few weeks ago.
My nephew was VERY excited to show me how he could hold them on his arm and show me how many eggs they got that day. I was there a few weeks before that when my brother-in-law brought in the most weird thing I had ever seen dealing with chickens. It was an egg with no shell.
The chicken laid a membrane egg. He showed it to me and I learned something new (again) at my sisters. He said that when the chicken is just starting to lay, sometimes they will lay a membrane egg. Very weird.
Something else I learned while visiting this last time, chickens eat weeds. They will also eat your garden if you let them. I did not know that. I thought they ate bugs and seeds. My sister pulled a few weeds and threw them over the fence into the penned area and the chickens went to town. 
I am so not a country girl obviously. I thought I would take a few photos of their set up as I had never seen one like it. I have had two neighbors in the past that had chickens and I wasn't really excited about the roosters as they would wake me early but I hadn't really looked at their set up. My sister has a neighbor that has chickens and the one next door has turkeys.
They have their little cubby holes, the feed hangs above the ground. Here the chickens are eating the weeds and they have a penned area where they can go outside. The wind vent keeps the area vented and they have the sky vent which also does that. I personally know four families right now that have chickens. It must be a popular thing to do. I still don't think I will be doing that any time soon.
Did you know we have chickens? Going on three years now. They aren't that bad really. Actually kind of fun and you don't have to have roosters to get eggs. We let ours out in the winter to eat in the garden. During the summer they stay in their yard which is pretty big, WAY bigger than your sister's chicken run. Their poop is good for fertilizer and you can get "chicken trailers" that he chicken stay in all the time. There is mesh on the bottom for the poop and pee to go through and you can move them around every couple weeks to fertilize your garden during the winter so in spring the garden is all ready. Pretty fun.
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