Chickens - Where to begin Part 1
Chickens!
If you have been thinking of getting chickens, you may be wondering where do you even begin to get the information. Or, maybe, you are like me, and procured the chickens and then had to build a coop around them and a fence and figure out the rest later.
That's not exactly how it went, but pretty close! We started with 7 chickens. We got them through a friend, and we had no idea how old they were, what breeds they were (and why that mattered) or what it took to get them to stay healthy and laying good eggs.
After 3 or so weeks of having these chickens, I had trained one to sit on my shoulder (My Brave Little Chicken) but they weren't laying, weren't eating much and what food they did have was scattered absolutely everywhere, and they were being very picky about which bits of it they would eat. It took about 4-5 weeks to get our first egg, and only 4 of the 7 chickens were laying. We would find out later it was because the 4 brown layers were younger than the 3 beautiful Black Australorps who were around 3 or 4 years old, and pretty much in retirement. This was not the farm beginning we were hoping for. (Although, I was super excited about that first egg)
Fast forward 5 years, and many question periods with my good friend Allison, more chicken care and breed books than any veterinarian or biologist has ever read on chickens, countless deaths, weird bugs, predators, poop examinations, and chicken language immersion sessions later (in which I mean, yes, I talk to my chickens) and I finally have found a relatively steady groove of understanding how these creatures work. I also don't want anyone else to go through this same blind experiment I did, although, many will.
All this to say, I am going to put together a series here on just starting with chickens. (spoiler alert: it ends with that chickens were put on this earth to die in the the dumbest way possible)
Today's blog will be about:
1. Chicken Basics
2. Basic Housing Needs
3. Food
In subsequent blogs, I will talk about choosing a chicken breed, illness and health, adding to a flock, coming to terms with animal death (and having a good death), cleanliness, eggs and what they tell us, predators, and much more. This will probably end up being a 6 part series, and I will also be offering workshops for my local to East Hants friends.
Chicken Basics
Let me start by saying, there are hundreds of breeds of chickens, many, many of which you can find in Nova Scotia. But if you troll the social media groups, such as Maritime Fowl on Facebook, you will start to notice a trend on some very popular types which give a good amount of eggs in a year, and you will also notice, as like every other social media site there is out there, that every person on there is a chicken expert and only their way is the right one, when it comes to newbies asking questions. While alot of the advice is good, it is not absolute and all situations are different
There are a few things to think about when looking at getting ready to have chickens
1. How many eggs would you like on a regular basis?
This is an important question, not just for choosing what chicken is right for you, but also, in choosing how many young hens you should get. If your main purpose of getting chickens is the eggs (which for 95% of you it is), then it is important to get an idea of how many eggs certain breeds lay, their lay life span and their life span (these do not necessarily coincide)
2. Do you need a rooster?
No. No you do not need a rooster to get eggs, no you do not need a rooster at all, unless you want to hatch chicks(and if you are reading this post, you are not there yet), and NO you do not need a rooster. They are noisy, can be hard on the hens, and hard on tiny humans if you happen to get a cranky one. Roosters are like level 5 in the chicken game, and only some people get there, and they are also not legal to have in some areas, especially more urban (I'll give you one guess for the reason).
3. What space do you have available to have chickens?
Do you have a large yard, how close are you to a road, what are the bylaws on fencing and size of flock, can they free roam or do they need to be always penned. This will help you determine how many chickens you can reasonably have in your space.
4. What time can you devote to them?
Luckily, chickens don't need alot of time, they generally put themselves to bed (rather than the odd one), and do just like to be left to their own. However, unless you have a completely predator proof housing and fence situation they should be locked up before dark, and let out relatively early to get full advantage of the light to be on a good laying schedule.
5. Chickens are smarter than they are given credit for.
Did you know that dog trainers use chickens to learn how to train dogs. Chickens can be super smart. They understand their name, they can be taught with rewards, they speak their own language to their young to teach them to hunt, it is truly fascinating. They should be given opportunities to use their brains. Like a swing in their yard, an old xylophone for them to peck at on their fence, or treat games. This small level of training, will help you if you need to call the hens home to roost as it were,
These are just a couple of the things to consider just in the pondering of getting chickens.
Basic Housing Needs
When you've decided yes, I think we can do chickens, before you run out and get them, you need to consider what they need to live in. I'm not going to go into huge detail, but just a few tips.
Chickens do not need a ton of space. If you have the space to let them roam, that is ideal as long as they can get back to their safe spot in the evening freely. Keep in mind though, that if you have a deck, the chickens will go on the deck, and they will poop on the deck, and when you go out on the nice sunny deck to have your morning coffee, you will get chicken poop on your foot. So, as much as letting them roam around the yard is a ton of fun, sometimes a fenced area is not a bad idea.
It is my opinion that if you have the right coop, you do not need to heat it. In fact, heating your coop could be a determinate to your chickens health. (I will get backlash on this one, I am sure). Heating is a human concept, we thing heat equals comfort and warmth. We think we need to put our super fluffy dogs in booties and sweaters to keep them warm in winter, and have a fan for our kitty to sit in front of in the summer to cool off. Here's the thing, Those animals have a warming and cooling system, and while yes we should keep them comfortable, bring them in, in extreme cold and heat, they really do not need the extra like us non fur or feather covered humans do. I digress, chickens have an internal average body temperature of about 106 degrees Fahrenheit (or 40ish degrees Celsius). When they are a little chilly, they huddle together, and are usually pretty cozy. If you walk into a large coop of 30 chickens on a cold winter day, that coop is a nice temperature. I do however, think ventilation is important, so having a little fan, or just a wind powered fan will do wonders for the state of your coop.
You should always have an enclosure for your chickens, even if they free roam. If you have a predator problem, the chickens still need yard time, if you can have this fully covered in a mesh, they will be protected from just about anything.
This is a very tip or a large amount of housing tips.
3. Food
When you first walk into a feed store (provided you knew there was a such thing as a feed store), it can be overwhelming. Depending on how many chickens you have, determines the amount of food you get. On a whole, feed for chickens is very affordable, around $20 for a 25kg (50lb) bag. For 30 chickens, this lasts me about 3 weeks, with supplemental food, such as kitchen scraps and sunflower seeds.
Laying hens need a specially formulated feed with about 16% protein. This means very little to you I know, it means about 1/7th of the food they eat needs to be protein. This will be higher when a chicken goes into a molt (we will talk about that in the future) or in a cold snap. There are organic options available for feed, and they come in 3 types.
1. Lay Mash - this is mashed grains mixed together. My chickens get lay mash as a "treat" because they like to pick the bits of corn and yummy sweet grains out, and just stomp the rest into oblivion. While chickens prefer this feed over the other 2, it tends to cause alot of waste, which means more trips to the feed store.
2. Lay Pellets - This is all the grains from the Lay Mash put into a pellet form, and if your hens have never had it before, they will protest, but hold fast, cause they have to eat sometime!
3. Lay Crumble - These are broken up pellets, and are a good mix of 1 and 2 small pieces, but they will eat it all, cause it is all the same.
4. Kitchen Scraps - Chickens can have just about any kitchen scraps, and eggshells are great for them, as odd as that sounds. It gives them the calcium they need, especially in winter, to keep a nice solid shell when they lay. Why is that important? Well, if an egg shell is brittle, there is an increased chance of it breaking inside the hen, and almost certain death for that hen unless you catch it right away. Some foods can affect the taste of eggs, such as garlic or peppers. And you should avoid onion scraps if you can. Give scraps sparingly, as they can affect the amount of eggs you get as well.
I hope I've given some enlightening tips, and made you think about the steps needed in even thinking about getting chickens. In the next part, we will get more in depth in illnesses, medicines, bugs, and all that other wonderful grossness that is Chickens!
Have a great day and I hope you are Living Simply!
Candi