Got Chickens?

I have a friend with chickens...her only problem so far has been finding people to take all of the fresh, extra eggs!

I have had chickens for about 5 years. My oldest chickens were laying still several eggs a week until they were five. Sadly about 20 of mine got wiped out in a racoon attack about 6 months ago. It got into my coop through the closed door. I think there must have been more than one. Devarmintalizing (lol) is one of the most important things you can do when you have chickens, it hurt our hearts to lose almost our whole flock. I still have 4 left. 3 hens and a rooster. Pity you can't have roosters, they really add a lot of interest the way they call the hens over when he finds a tasty morsel! Mine are fully free range, when I had over 20 this was a problem, they would poop everywhere!
I am thinking about getting a few more ameraucanas and a couple of silkies.
I feed mine all my scraps from the table, they come running when they hear the door open !
Backyardchickens is my favorite chicken website, they have a great forum with intelligent chickeny members.
Be careful where you buy your extra chickens from, stick to a hatchery, I bought several from a lady up the road and they were diseased and killed several of my chickens, I had to burn everything.

Our chickens are like our aquarium, but chicks are so much fun, and easy to raise. Worth a little extra effort.

Chickens are very long suffering, I had one who I was missing for ten days, and I was sure she had been killed. Then one day I noticed a feather sticking out from under a piece of wood that had blown over. She had been under there for ten days without food or water, and she lived 2 more years after that, until said raccoon attack.

My friendliest ever breed was my cuckoo marans, she would come and sit on my lap and follow me around!

For all the people who have never had chickens, and yet know so much about them. My chickens were over five years old and still laying 3-4 eggs per week, huge eggs too. They don't just stop laying after two, the production just dwindles gradually.

My daughter had 4 hens for awhile, and allowed them to roam her sizeable back yard for a couple of hours daily. She loved the great, free-range, organic eggs, and the chickens were really fun pets that ate bugs and slugs.

But her yard eventually took a toll. They scratch with amazing vigor, and tore the edges of the lawn up pretty thoroughly, ate or uprooted small plants and damaged others. They leave "fertilizer" everywhere, so she finally built a moveable pen to limit those effects.

Food and supplies were incredibly expensive. After keeping track of the starting and ongoing costs, her husband figured they probably spent $10 per egg. But that would have come down if they had kept the chickens another year. As it was, they sadly gave "the girls" to a friend with a small farm nearby.

It was a lovely experience in many ways, though. My daughter and grandson both really enjoyed their chickens.

I don't have chickens but remember-- predators are smart. I know someone who had a completely covered, chicken wired area and wouldn't you know? The racoons figured out how to open the door, how to burrow under the wire, etc. They were picked off one by one, even Alpha Hen. Coyotes have gotten to other flocks, too.

I'm glad to hear your's are covered. We have some chicken owners here in Portland who forget that chickens can actually fly! I have shooed more than one chicken back into its own yard. A three foot fence doesn't cut it if they get a hankering to venture out.

We have cousin that also raises chickens. Has for many years. People also have given her chickens they no longer wanted.. She lives in Houston.

They only lay for a year or 2 and they can live up to 7 years old. Keep that in mind.. She has to hire people to feed and clean whenever she is going to gone ...

Chickens also need to be kept at certain temperatures so make sure you research this.

Other what the other posters have said about keeping them safe you also need to remember that they will peck anything as they get older (eyes, rings, etc.). Keep a close watch when your kids are with them.

We're rural and zoned for horses.
4 of our neighbors have chickens.
3 of them keep them in coops with fenced/covered yards while the people down the block let them out to wander the fields during the day and coop them up at night.
They have to watch for foxes, snakes and coyotes trying to go after the chickens and/or eggs.
They laid eggs pretty well for about 3 years before they began drastically slowing down.
They can eat any veggie peelings except for anything from any sort of potatoes.
They love pecking away at a cabbage (we drill a hole through it and hang it on a rope).
They also love bread scraps and cherry tomatoes.
We save up eggs shells, break them up after they dry and scatter them for the chickens to eat.
Chicken manure is good in the garden but it has to age a bit first.

http://www.backyardchickens.com

Having Hens are so popular nowadays.
And so many people have them now. In our city too.
But, they are a lot of work. And messy.
Ditto the comments below.
And bear in mind that, well at least here.... having "pet" food of any kind, outside, attracts rats and other rodents. And yes, they can... enter any kennel because rats and mice can squeeze themselves through the tiniest hole in a kennel fence.
And they can climb too.
One woman I know, one of her hens got killed by a rat.

Anyway, so over time, there are a lot of "wild" chickens all over the place now, in my city, all over! Because, they escape (yes they can fly), or the owners simply get tired of having them. So just like stray cats etc., there are now lots of "stray" chickens. Wild chickens now.

But sure, they are cute.
I was gonna get some too.
But I don't want to anymore.
Too much upkeep and cost.

We live on a small farm in Texas, and have had chickens in the past. We loved having the fresh eggs!

We had a chicken coop that was enclosed with chicken wire that we closed the chickens in every night. During the day they roamed free in the chicken yard. That worked well for a long time, but then one morning I went to get the eggs and let the chickens out of the coop, and several of the chickens were extremely stressed out. Two of the chickens had been eaten during the night. There were bones and heads in the nests. I called Animal Control and asked a few questions, and they told me that raccoons and skunks both have the dexterity to peel back the chicken wire, but the skunks will eat the heads, and raccoons won't. We fixed the wire, but the raccoons came back the next night anyway and ate the rest of the chickens. It was awful.

We tried again a few years later, and this time we had really stupid chickens that kept jumping the fence when the dogs were out. It didn't go well. We also had one chicken that hopped up into a tree and proceeded to tree-hop until completely out of sight.

We converted the chicken coop into a goat house and had goats for a year or so, but I didn't care for goats much. Then we got pigs about 11 years ago. They have been fantastic!

That being said, the 5 years or so that we had chickens were quite exciting, and there is nothing quite like the goodness of a fresh egg! Enjoy!

Just beware - we live in a great "crunchy granola" part of town with lots of urban farmers and whole food eaters and with all the composting and chicken feed, we have developed a new problem - rats! A huge surge in the rat population that they've traced back to the rise in urban farming, specifically chickens. Plus, chickens only lay eggs for a few years, but they live a lot longer than their laying years. What will you do with them then?

I had chickens several times in my life when we lived in a rural area. I've had full sized chickens and bantams. Bantams produce small sized eggs (small vrs large and X-Large for the regular chickens). All of mine were free range. There is such a difference in the appearance of real free-range chickens and regular super market eggs. (Free range means the chickens are free to range over the lawn/field and eat what ever they can see or eat.)

Bantams are able to take care of themselves if you go on vacation as long as they have a water source. The water source can be morning dew if it is a heavy dew. I had coons come after my chicken feed so I put a clam trap in the chicken feed can and caught a raccoon. Since the coon (raccoon) was corn fed (my chicken feed), I fried him up and ate him.

Get the number of chickens that will match the number of eggs you eat. In my case I wanted 4 to 6 eggs each day so I got 4 chickens and we always seems to have extra eggs in the frig.

If I were to buy chickens today, I would make a portable coop for them and move the coop once or twice per week so they would have fresh grass.

Good luck to you and yours.

for what it's worth, youshould probably source a vet who is adept at chicken issues. They can and do fall sick, get diseased, develop behavioural problems. If raised commercially, they are simply and cheaply put down. If you regard them as pets, and will invest in their treatment and recovery, best source a vet.

Good luck,
F. B.