Build your own chicken run/ark & adopt 'Battery Hens'

Essexdelboy

Ok this is for information really, but hopefully it will inspire someone else to do the same.

I had wanted to keep chickens for a few years, but like most people had put it off and put it off, until I saw a guy getting rid of lots of timber from his DIY’ing on http://www.freecycle.org/, so I thought why not recycle the wood and thus I attempted an ark.

I thought I’ll give it a go first of all and if it turns out ok then maybe investigate getting some chickens. So I set about making an ark, rather than paying ~£150-200 for one, I got a magazine from the library (Practical Poultry Sept 2007 issue) and it had a great step by step guide of how to build your own ark, so a few screws later and a bit of joinery I had a 3ft by 8ft ark, complete with run, house, a perch and roost boxes. All for nothing but a days work (apart from a few screws)!

So now for the chickens, well my granddad bought a chicken feeder and drinker at a church fete for £2 and he also picked up a book on keeping chickens at a bootsale for me, and to cut a look story short last month I rescued 3 Battery Hens (Rhode Island Red Hybrids) from going to slaughter with the help of the Battery Hen Welfare Trust (http://www.bhwt.org.uk/). They now live there life out in luxury, they are great pets, good for the kids to play with abd teaches them some responsibility and they give me about ~12 eggs a week (equivalent of around £3-4 a week in eggs)

Why not give it a try? Its ethical and green and saves you money on eggs in the long run!

Mojisola

And you'll get completely hooked by your new pets!

pippy100

Well done!!
Can you put pictures up of your creation? We are looking to keep chickens but still at the research stage.
Does anyone know for 3 chickens how much would the food cost for 12months as an average?

Beki

pippy100 wrote: »

Does anyone know for 3 chickens how much would the food cost for 12months as an average?

we go through one 25kg sack of feed roughly every 3 weeks for seven chickens. which would work out at roughly every 8 weeks for three.

feed is around £8 per sack here, so if you were to work it out yearly for 3, it'd probably cost you in the region of £1 per week to feed them, so around £52 for the year HTH

simpywimpy

do you get an egg a day from each hen?

Beki

from 7 hens we get anywhere from 4-7 eggs per day, usually 5 or 6 so from 3 i would say you'd get roughly 15-18 eggs per week

Mojisola

Egg laying will vary. Ex-battery hens lay more reliably because that's what they've been bred to do but in the battery cages they will have had a regular temperature and almost 24 hours of daylight. Changes in temperature - hot or cold - can affect them and they will lay fewer eggs over the autumn and winter months.

You also need to think ahead to when egg production really drops off. Are you going to cull the older birds and get new ones? We have rare breeds and they live out their natural lifespan with us and some of them have lived for fifteen years! I wouldn't expect modern hybrids to live that long but you need to be prepared for when they are no longer giving you eggs but are still costing you money. Are they money-saving production units or pets to you?

Beki

pets - was just giving a rough idea of our costs and how many eggs etc the eggs are a yummy bonus xx

Essexdelboy

my camera is not working at the mo but if you want i can email you a scan of the magazine article that i followed?

Essexdelboy

Each hen give me 5 eggs a week approx, enough for our house and some for the neighbours now and again!

simpywimpy

are chickens bothered by any parasites or similar at all? I know you have to move the run periodically but is there a downside to chickens in a large family garden?